Breakdown of Я особенно благодарен друзьям за их тёплые слова и поддерживающие сообщения.
Questions & Answers about Я особенно благодарен друзьям за их тёплые слова и поддерживающие сообщения.
In modern Russian, the present‑tense form of быть (to be) is normally omitted.
- English: I am grateful
- Russian: Я благодарен (literally: I grateful)
The full form я есть благодарен sounds archaic, theatrical, or deliberately emphatic and is almost never used in normal speech or writing.
So Я особенно благодарен друзьям… already means I am especially grateful to (my) friends…, and the verb “to be” is understood from context.
Благодарен is the short form of the adjective благодарный (grateful).
- Full form: благодарный (used mainly before a noun or as a stronger, more “quality-like” description)
- благодарный человек – a grateful person
- Short form: благодарен (used mainly in the predicate, like “is grateful”)
- Я благодарен друзьям – I am grateful to (my) friends
Short-form paradigm of благодарный:
- Masculine: благодарен
- Feminine: благодарна
- Neuter: благодарно
- Plural: благодарны
In your sentence:
- Subject я is masculine → благодарен
A woman would say:
- Я особенно благодарна друзьям…
The adjective благодарен (and the phrase быть благодарным) governs the dative case for the person you are grateful to:
- благодарен кому? – grateful to whom? → друзьям (dative plural)
- за что? – for what? → за слова и сообщения (accusative after за)
So the pattern is:
- Я благодарен кому? – друзьям (to friends, dative)
- за что? – за их тёплые слова и поддерживающие сообщения (for their warm words and supportive messages, accusative)
Using друзей (genitive) here would be incorrect in standard Russian.
You can say моим друзьям, but Russian often omits possessive pronouns where English requires them, especially with close relationships or body parts:
- Я позвонил друзьям. – I called (my) friends.
- Он помыл руки. – He washed (his) hands.
In your sentence:
- Я особенно благодарен друзьям… naturally implies my friends from context.
Variations:
- моим друзьям – to my friends (neutral, a bit more explicit)
- своим друзьям – to my own friends (reflexive, often stylistically preferred)
Since the subject is я, моим друзьям and своим друзьям here both mean to my friends, but своим puts more subtle emphasis on “one’s own” friends and is slightly more elegant in many contexts:
- Я особенно благодарен своим друзьям за… – very natural and common.
With gratitude, thanks, or praise in Russian, the standard preposition is за + accusative:
- Спасибо за помощь. – Thank you for the help.
- Я благодарен вам за поддержку. – I am grateful to you for your support.
So:
- благодарен (кому?) друзьям за (что?) их тёплые слова…
Other prepositions would be wrong or change the meaning:
- для – for the purpose of / for (someone to use), not used with “to be grateful for”
- о – about, concerning
- по – has many uses, but not for being grateful for X
So for reasons of gratitude, за + accusative is the correct and typical choice.
They are in the accusative plural, governed by за:
- за что? → за тёплые слова and (за) поддерживающие сообщения
However, with inanimate nouns, the accusative plural looks the same as the nominative plural, so you have to use context:
- слова – nom. pl. / acc. pl.
- сообщения – nom. pl. / acc. pl.
Because they come after за, we know they are accusative.
Their adjectives/participles agree in case, number, and gender:
- тёплые – adj., plural (nom./acc.) → matches слова
- поддерживающие – participle/adj., plural (nom./acc.) → matches сообщения
The pronoun их (their) is indeclinable in modern standard Russian when used as a possessive pronoun. It does not change for case, gender, or number:
- их книга – their book
- их книги – their books
- к их книге – to their book
- за их книгу – for their book
- за их тёплые слова – for their warm words
So you always use их; you never say forms like иху, ихом, etc.
(As a personal pronoun form “them”, их can be genitive/accusative too, but the form itself still doesn’t change.)
Both are grammatically correct:
за их тёплые слова и поддерживающие сообщения
– “for their warm words and supportive messages”
Here, их logically applies to both слова and сообщения.за их тёплые слова и их поддерживающие сообщения
– also correct, but the second их adds slight extra emphasis on their messages.
In natural Russian, it is very common not to repeat the possessive pronoun if it is clearly shared:
- их дом и машина – their house and (their) car
So the original sentence is perfectly natural and not ambiguous.
поддерживающие here is a present active participle of the imperfective verb поддерживать (to support, to encourage), used as an adjective:
- Verb: поддерживать – to support / encourage
- Participle: поддерживающий / поддерживающая / поддерживающее / поддерживающие
In your sentence:
- поддерживающие сообщения – “supportive / encouraging messages”
- plural, agreeing with сообщения
Participles like this often behave just like adjectives and are very common in written Russian. You could also express the idea differently, e.g.:
- сообщения с поддержкой – messages with support
- ободряющие сообщения – encouraging messages
But поддерживающие сообщения is natural and clear.
Both are adverbs of degree, but they are not identical:
- очень благодарен – very grateful (degree of intensity)
- особенно благодарен – especially / particularly grateful (more about contrast or singling it out)
In your sentence:
- Я особенно благодарен друзьям…
Suggests that, among all the people or reasons, you are particularly grateful to your friends (maybe more than to others, or more than for other things).
особенно often implies “more than usual / more than to others / more than for other things,” whereas очень simply says “a lot.”
Yes, Russian word order is flexible, and moving особенно changes the nuance of emphasis.
Я особенно благодарен друзьям за их тёплые слова…
– neutral, common; emphasis on the degree of gratitude:
I am especially grateful to my friends (in general) for…Я благодарен друзьям особенно за их тёплые слова…
– puts stronger emphasis on именно за их тёплые слова (especially for their warm words, perhaps more than for something else they did).Особенно я благодарен друзьям за…
– slightly more stylistic or expressive; особенно highlights the whole statement.
All are grammatical; the original word order is the most neutral and typical.
Yes. In Russian you can often omit the pronoun я when the form of the verb or short-form adjective already shows the person and gender.
- Особенно благодарен друзьям за их тёплые слова…
– “[I am] especially grateful to (my) friends for their warm words…”
Because благодарен is masculine singular, the listener infers that the speaker is a man.
A woman would normally say:
- Особенно благодарна друзьям за их тёплые слова…
Both versions without я sound quite natural, especially in written or more formal contexts (e.g. letters, speeches).