The case system is also used in languages like Latin, Greek and German. This may be said about someone who doubts and neither enters or leaves. On one occasion, the patient was asked to memorize about 10 lines of syllables like this: This man remembered every single moment of his life, thousands of pages of texts, and random numbers easily, yet this was the hardest task he’d ever been asked to complete. In comparison with Instrumental singular, plural is child’s play. Then for the nouns that have a, masculine and neutral nouns don’t change if they’re inanimate. You know that 80% of feminine nouns end with, in the Nominative. (I’m calling grandma) Бабушка is a feminine noun like the word мама from my example. Well, because it’s phonetically inconvenient! Wait a minute! The second most common case is with preposition o (about). Replace “й” with “и” Replace “ь” with “и” For f… In the cases of words like “father” these relate to physical gender. So, the correct arrangement is Бу́, (My day is busy with lessons) In this sentence the stem ends with a soft consonant, like in the word слова, (We go with my colleague to the cinema). If you’re tired of studying endless tables with endings of Russian cases, then you’ve come to the right place. Anastasia Korol is an enthusiastic Russian language tutor. We use -ёв when the stress relocates to the ending of the word: край – краёв (edge), бой – боёв (a fight). This is a, This table contains 8 mini-rules, but we’re not going to learn them by heart. The prepositions that go with this case are –, (I’ll buy a boat and will travel by sea and by lake). Before you begin, complete the following 10 question quiz. I made an easy sentence, relevant to every student. Very often you’ll hear the phrase “, stem in the word like in the phrase носить на ру, (Beluga whales live in Northern seas) The stem ends up with a, Before you read further, try to guess what stems require the –, nouns. in Genitive, we remove the last sound [э] and get занят, ]: in Genitive, we remove the last sound [а] and get лекц, ]: in Genitive, we remove the last sound [а] and get традиц, The next two conclusions describe a situation when we. 10 complicated rules turned into just one example! I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but with the help of one example, the entire concept of the present perfect continuous tense became super clear to me. Я прочитал это в книг(а) на первой страниц(а), Я думаю об этой истор(ия). So, the method I use now is: Don’t memorize the rule, memorize an example. For easier navigation through the article, you can use these links: A few weeks ago, I was reading a book by the Russian neuropsychologist A. Luria, in which he described his patient with a phenomenal memory. Here we also need to apply the idea of the hard and soft stem ending rules. Write the example down and check yourself! The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners - Probably the best course in a book. Masculine nouns: инструмент – инструментом (an instrument), стул – стулом (a chair), Feminine nouns: книга – книгой (a book), рука – рукой (a hand). Here’re the ones that I’ve chosen. We also use it to talk about the time of the day. Each table shows the 6 Russian cases and their endings. We’ve already talked about this pattern in the Instrumental case here. When a joiner loses his hummer (an instrument) he thinks “Where is it?” and says “O, …” (Russian equivalent to Hm…) and when his wife finds it in the fridge, she says surprisingly “О, Let me give you several examples of how nouns with a, But what happens when the stem ends with a. for masculine and for feminine nouns respectively. If noun is animate and ends in a consonant, add “а”.3. Conclusion 2 The same rule applies to feminine nouns, with the exception that after a hard consonant you add -ы (мама – мамы (a mother), сестра – сестры (a sister), and after a soft consonant at the end of a stem we add -и (Настя – Насти). I think by now you can easily figure out the rule yourself. To indicate each case we change the ending of word. Can you tell that the wrong version is difficult to pronounce? It seems to be much simpler, though it still contains 7 rules. If it is a soft sign “ь” then it could be either masculine or feminine. what the gender is: 1. For masculine nouns:If the word ends in a consonant, add “ы”.Replace “й” with “и”Replace “ь” with “и” For feminine nouns:Replace “а” with “ы”Replace “я” with “и”Replace “ь” with “и”For neuter nouns:Replace “о” with “а”Replace “е” with “я”, Examples:студент becomes: студенты (student - students)газета becomes: газеты (newspaper - newspapers)здание becomes: здания (building - buildings). It’s obvious that the Genitive has a lot of, endings, which will tell us something already. It is best to learn the words and the way they sound in different cases by heart. What would you say about this table? Let’s transcript my name for example, Наст, So, in the words that end with the vowel [а] sound, even it’s expressed by the letter, 3) We apply this rule when we talk about words that end with –, The big table says that we change these endings on –. . It’s important not to worry much about the fine details of grammar at first. So, here’s a typical table and the 8 rules it describes. Conclusion 1 If the stem of a word ends with a hard consonant, we add –ах. I watched it “to holes”). Right, if a stem ends with a hard consonant, we use –у. That’s true by the way . The Russian word’s position is not so important because it’s meaning in the sentence is indicated by it’s case. In feminine nouns ending with а -ь, we change it for и. A summary of the grammar information you learnt in this lesson is always available in the grammar section of this site. In English we do this by having a strict word-order. The meaning of the sentence would be completely changed. Compare two words: тёщей and тёщой. Conclusion 3 What about female nouns? Я звоню бабушк(а). The second name of the American politician is, . Now it’s your turn! I often hear that Russian is a bizarre language, and I can't disagree. What is so appealing about it? For example: ей: врач – врачей, плащ – плащей, соль – солей. But even in such a broad language like Russian, it is difficult to find a phrase that would fit every case. Of course, we’re not going to do that. That’s why the “favorite” verbs of the Accusative case are: любить (to like, to love), видеть (to see), and знать (to know) with the prepositions в, на, под, по (up to). The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners, Russian-English Bilingual Visual Dictionary, Russian Learners' Dictionary: 10,000 Russian Words in Frequency Order. Which one is correct – колле, ? This table contains 8 mini-rules, but we’re not going to learn them by heart. is in Accusative but looks completely the same as in its Nominative form. Inanimate objects in Accusative plural look as Nominative plural, and the animate ones, like the Genitive plural. And you know, mothers rarely give bad advice. Secondly, feminine nouns are different: they use –ы and –и. That is why we say: “У меня нет кни. makes perfect sense because the object will still be in the accusative case. Russian has six cases, and the case of a word is denoted by suffixes (word endings) that tell you the context of the word. Therefore, I could say “I’ve been watching you for a long time” or “I have been looking for the answer for years.”. Open any vocabulary list and pick your own nouns that you find suitable. “Anna’s flowers”)Instrumental case: Indicates ‘with’ or ‘by means of’. The first one is the following: to neutral nouns, we just add –, From the table we can see that masculine and feminine nouns use pretty similar endings, with one difference: the masculine get –, The vast majority of words in the Russian language have a stem ending in a. of course. This perfectly fits the rule I just mentioned. For example, “. In the genitive we find various types of endings. My dear learners, I would be very glad to know if you still prefer traditional tables cramming or this method works for you better. We change –, we can make the following phrase: Я терпеть не могу математик, (I hate math and geometry). Try to use nothing but your super-example. We’ve already talked about this pattern in the Instrumental case here. Right, its main task is to show the object of an action. For example: In my opinion, this is a very helpful idea too. Let’s go!