Six Cases
Cases are often seen as the ‘Ghost’ of the Russian language. Like the white rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: ‘Look, that rabbit’s got a vicious streak a mile wide, it’s a killer!’ In this case, it’s a six-headed monster.
The Six Cases
Nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and locative. The six Russian grammatical cases (in English: cases, in Russian падежи) affect words, names, numbers—basically everything, and all the time.
| Case / Case Name | Падеж |
|---|---|
| nominative / nominative | имени́тельный |
| genitive / genitive | роди́тельный |
| dative / dative | да́тельный |
| accusative / accusative | вини́тельный |
| instrumental / instrumental | твори́тельный |
| locative / prepositional | предло́жный |
(Abbreviations: Им, Рд, Дт, Вн, Тв, Пр – sometimes a single letter is used)
A Logical System
Knowing when to use each case is usually easy to determine. The system is logically structured, and you get used to it quickly. Moreover, you can do a lot with it. The Russian cases enrich the language while also keeping it compact.
Finally: Finnish has 16 cases, and Hungarian has 21 – six should be manageable, right? There were even seven cases at one point. You learn them one by one, or you can take a quick look at how these six fit together. The clips below (with study tips) are also helpful for those who need a summary and an overview at a later stage.
Intro to Cases and Strategies for Learning Them
(College Russian, 2015, 11 m)
From the same channel: Strategies for Memorizing Case Endings in Russian (2018, 9 m)
The Idea of a Case
(Denis Fedorov, 2017, 6 m)
From the same creator: How to Learn Russian Cases (and Grammar) (2016, 15 m)
“When the player kicks the ball – well, the ball will be flying, and will be the main part of the sentence” (1:34).
All Russian Cases: Essential Russian Grammar
(Victoria Arysheva, 2016, 4 m)
More
See
- A Complete Guide to Grammatical Cases in Russian (Languages with Tom, 2019, 10 m)
- Русская грамматика: ПАДЕЖИ (Elen Sheff, 2017, 12 m)
- Russian Cases Trainer (Real Russian Club, 2017, 6 m)
- All Russian Cases in 2 Minutes (Cafe Russian, 2016, 5 m)
- Russian Grammar: Cases (Antonia Romaker, 2013, 7 m)
See/read
- Decoding the 6 Russian Cases: A Beginner’s Guide (Live Fluent)
- Russian Cases (Study Russian Online)
- Russian Cases Cheat Sheet (Cheatography)
- Russian Cases from Scratch (FluentU)
- Russian Cases – How to Learn Them Easily (Fast Language Mastery)
- Russian Cases in Simple Words (Pen4Pals)
- Russian Declension Chart – Declension of Russian Nouns (Learn Russian Step by Step)
- Russian/Grammar/Cases (Wikibooks)
- The 6 Cases in Russian Grammar (ThoughtCo.)
- The Cases of Russian Nouns (Master Russian)
As a bonus and irresistible finale, here’s Падежи by Centromania (2019, 4 m). More about the project РТВЭМ – русский текст в электронной музыке (Russian text in electronic music) on soderzhanie.com.
More
Language
Verbs work for those who want to make sentences. There - work and make, there you already have two. And try to make Russian out of that sentence if you if you don’t know работать or делать. So work, also on your vocabulary.
Even with bad news there is good news: there is a lot to learn from it. Russian news articles are excellent teaching material, even for the more advanced student.
The sixth noun, in Russian предложный падеж, is for most students the first one they learn. The reason is simple: the sixth grammatical case itself is.
And then it became war. Or should we say began the special military operation. On
February 24 2022 Russian troops entered Ukraine. It was allowed
neither war nor invasion be called, but it was akin to both.
This often comes as a setback for students of Russian: of (almost) every Russian verb there are two. Which do mean approximately the same thing, but express very different things. So you need to know both, and of both learn the conjugations.
Making mistakes in Cyrillic is no big deal. Everyone does. But wrong Cyrillic, that’s the biggest mistake you can make. And the worst thing you can do with that noble Cyrillic can do.
