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In this lesson we will introduce some of the Russian grammar that is associated with nouns.
This is the second lesson in a row that will deal with a lot of the Russian grammar, but afterwards you will start to see a little less, as we
concentrate more on Russian phrases and vocabulary in the following lessons.
This lesson will introduce two concepts: Gender of nouns, and cases. Specifically the accusative case.
Other cases will be introduced through-out later lessons.
Definitions
Noun - A noun is a thing, name or place. Example: dog, cat, Moscow, cup, paper, pen.
Cases - Cases are a grammatical way of determining what a noun does in a sentence. In English we do this by having a strict word-order. In Russian we use 6 cases.
Gender of nouns.
In Russian, as with many other languages, each noun is assigned a gender. Russian has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter (neutral).
In the cases of words like “father” these relate to physical gender. In the case of other objects like “pen”, “cup”, “house”, there is no physical
meaning attached to the gender. However you will still need to know the gender because it affects how words are formed.
Luckily, unlike many languages, in Russian it is almost always possible to tell what the gender of a noun by its spelling.
This is not true in some other languages where you just have to memorise them.
When you use a noun as the subject of a sentence, it will be in its dictionary form. In this form you can easily work out it’s gender.
If the noun is in another part of the sentence the ending is changed to suit the case. From the dictionary form of a noun, here is how you can tell
what the gender is:
1. Look at the last letter of the word:
2. If it is a consonant, or “й”, the word is masculine.
3. If it is “а” or “я” it is feminine.
4. If it is “о” or “е” it is neuter.
5. If it is a soft sign “ь” then it could be either masculine or feminine.
There are very few exceptions to these rules. But there are five notable exceptions, this occurs mainly because of physical gender.
Папа - (Daddy, Papa) - Is Masculine
Дядя - (Uncle) - Is Masculine
Дедушка - (Grandfather) - Is Masculine
Мужчина - (Man) - Is Masculine
Кофе - (Coffee) - Is Masculine
Some examples:
Masculine : паспорт (passport), документ (document), брат (brother), Хлеб (bread).
Feminine : газета (newspaper), Россия (Russia), Дочь (daughter)
Neuter : здание (building), радио (radio), письмо (letter)
The Nominative Case. (The subject of a sentence)
The nominative case is used for the subject of a sentence. In the sentence “I love her”, the word “I” is the subject.
The nominative case is the dictionary form for nouns, so there is nothing special to learn here.
The only time you need to change the ending is to form the plural. In English we make a plural by adding “s”.
In Russian, in the nominative case, you make a plural by using the letters “и”, “ы”, “я” or “а”.
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”
Some examples:
студент (student) becomes: студенты (students)
газета (newspaper) becomes: газеты (newspapers)
здание - (building) becomes: здания (buildings)
The Accusative Case. (The object of a sentence)
To form simple sentences like “I want a dog”, you need to use the accusative case also.
The accusative case is used for the object of a sentence, in this case the word “dog”.
The only time we use the accusative case in English is with pronouns. We use “me” instead of “I” and “him” instead of “he”.
Russian uses the case for all nouns.
Russian is very free about word order. For example, in Russian it may be possible to change the order of the words in a sentence, without
changing the actual meaning. This doesn’t work in English because we rely on the subject always coming first. However, in Russian it still
makes perfect sense because the object will still be in the accusative case. It is normal in Russian to use the same word ordering as English.
Definition: An “animate” noun is something that is alive (person or animal). An “inanimate” noun is a non-living object.
Here are the rules for forming the accusative case from the dictionary (nominative) form.
Masculine Nouns:
1. If the noun in inanimate, there is no change.
2. If noun is animate and ends in a consonant, add “а”.
3. If noun is animate, replace “й”, with “я”.
4. If noun is animate, replace “ь”, add “я”.
Feminine Nouns:
1. Replace “а” with “у”.
2. Replace “я” with “ю”.
Neuter Nouns:
1. Inanimate nouns do not change (almost all neuter nouns are inanimate).
Conclusion
Now you know all the theory to move onto lesson 7.
In the next lesson we will focus on forming sentences, vocabulary building and take a rest from grammar.
A summary of the grammar information you learnt in this lesson is always available in the grammar section of this site.
To help you remember some of the concepts learnt in this lesson, you may wish to work through the exercises.
Exercises
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