Language

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.

With “with,” you immediately have the key word for the instrumental case. With a discount, with Katya, with respect, by hand: all instrumental case or творительный падеж. You can do much more with this case; it’s truly a beautiful and useful tool.

The joker in a card game, the knight in chess: if you’re looking for something as quirky among the six cases, you’ll quickly land on the fourth. Rules for the accusative or винительный падеж are simple, yet (or perhaps because of that) it can easily catch you off guard.

The dative case in Russian is called дательный падеж. The name itself gives you a clue when to use it. In дательный, you find дать, which means “to give” (also давать—see here for conjugations). This originates from Latin, where dare means “to give” and datum means “given.” In Russian, when something is given, it’s done in the dative case, just like in many other languages.

As easy as it was with the first case, it becomes that much more complicated with the second. The genitive or родительный падеж is challenging in several areas. It is the most used and versatile, but also the most complex.

The nominative case (именительный падеж) is almost a freebie in Russian. The way a word appears in the dictionary is how it appears in the nominative case. ‘Nominative’ comes from nominare (to name), and in именительный you may recognize имя, meaning name.

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.