Russian Cases Explained | Russian Language

Hey, what's up guys? How's it going? My name is Fedor. Today we are going to tackle a hard topic. It's a pretty complex topic, but I think it's easy to understand. And it is Russian cases. Today I'm going to only cover the cases of nouns. In the later videos I'm going to continue the series to cover adjectives and pronouns. So, let's get to it. Let's start with what is the case, what are the cases and what do we even have them in Russian and we do not have them in English. Well, we kind of do have them in English, it's just in a little bit different form. Alright? So, in English how we use nouns? Usually with prepositions, right? Let's say, I give a book to my friend. So, to my friend. So, it's a preposition plus a noun, right? But in Russian we combine it all into one word, but we just change the ending of this word according to the case that we are using it in. And let's talk about cases right now. In Russian we have six cases. And the first one is a nominative case or именительный поддержник, how we say it in Russian. And it's going to reflect the initial form of the word. In other words, the form that you would find in a dictionary. And most of the times it's going to be a subject in a sentence. For example, мама готовит еду. Mom is cooking food. As we can see it's in an initial form, мама, you can find it in a dictionary. And in this sentence it's going to be a subject, right? And еду is an object. Alright, let's get to the next one which is a genitive case or родительный поддержник in Russian. And it's going to reflect an origin of where the object is coming from. Let's say, the size of a box. So, size of what? Of a box. So, the size is going to come from the box. It's going to originate in a box. And then, the second one is possessions. Let's say, it's a book of mine, right? So, whose book is that? Mine. So, it's going to be possessions. And that's why it's going to replace the apostrophe s form for Russian sentences. And origin is going to replace of and from. And lastly, we have none of. When we talk about there is none of something, we're going to use this genitive case. Alright, let's look at the example. Стол моего друга. A table of my friend. So, whose table is it? My friend's. So, it's going to be first an origin and a possession. It's my friend's table. Okay, that's why we're going to use this genitive case in this sentence. And you can see that we have of and friend in the English version. But we only have one word in Russian. Because it's going to be a preposition plus a noun. It's going to be combined into one word, which is going to be друга. Next one is going to be dative case. It's the third one. And in Russian it's дательный падеж. We mostly use it with sentences where we describe that we're giving something to somebody. Giving something. And that's what's going to replace the preposition to. And also, we put an indirect object in a dative case. Let's look at the example so I can explain what an indirect object is. Я дал машину другу. I gave a car to the friend. So, obviously, I is a subject, gave is a verb. A car is going to be a direct object. So, I gave something, I gave a car, so it's going to be direct, to the friend. So, the friend is going to be indirect. Because I didn't give my friend to the car, I gave a car to my friend. That's why it's going to be an indirect object. And we have two plus friend all combined into one word, другу. Let's look at the accusative case. It's the next one. This one is going to describe a direct object. We're going to put a direct object into the accusative case. For example, я дал машину другу. I gave a car to the friend. The same exact sentence, the same exact example. And we're going to put a car, or the word машина, which is a car, into an accusative case. It's going to be машину. So, that was an accusative case. Let's look at the instrumental case, or творительный падеж, how it's said in Russian. We use this case mostly when we talk about that we are using something to do something. Like, we use an instrument. That's why it's an instrumental case. And that's why it's going to replace prepositions with and by. For example, я пишу ручкой. I write with a pen. So, we use a pen to write. So, a pen is a tool. That's why we have with a pen, or just ручкой in Russian. So, with plus a pen is going to be one word, ручкой. Next one, and the last one, is a prepositional case, or предложный падеж, how it's said in Russian. We use it only with prepositions. It might be obvious for you, because it's a prepositional case. And it's going to replace a lot of prepositions, but mostly we use it with, instead of, prepositions about, on, and in. For example, я говорю о тебе. I talk about you. So, we see that we have a preposition о, which is about, and we have, so, about is going to be о, and you is going to be тебе. So, ты is you in the initial form, but if we put it in this case, it's going to be тебе. So, ты changes to тебе. But let's talk about forms right now. Now we learned the differences between the cases. Now let's learn how to put nouns into an appropriate case. We have three genders of nouns, masculine, feminine, and neuter. Don't ask me about this neuter gender. I don't even know why it's there, why we can't just go with masculine and feminine. So, and we have six cases, a nominative case, a genitive case, a dative case, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional case. And, of course, for each of the columns and rows is going to be a different ending. Let's start with masculine. We're going to use the word стул, which means a chair. So, стул. And a nominative case is going to be an initial form of it. It's not going to have any ending. Genitive case is going to be стула. So, we add the ending а to the word. Dative case is going to be стулу. We're going to add у to it. And accusative case, just стул, again, no ending. And instrumental case, стулом, we add ом to it. And prepositional case is going to be стуле, we add е to it. And that's it for masculine. And let's look at the neuter right now, because it's about the same. It's almost the same as masculine. The only difference is that we have the ending о in both of these cases, in a nominative case and an accusative case. It's hard to pronounce that. And that's it. All the rest is going to be the same. As you can see, а, а, у, у, ом, ом, е, е. So, there's no point for me to go over that. Finally, let's talk about feminine. In the feminine, in a nominative case, it's going to have an ending а. Just like in the example мама, which means mom, of course. So, we're going to replace the ending а into an appropriate ending for each of the cases. Genitive case is going to be мамы. So, the ending is going to be у. But mostly, and pretty often, we use the ending и for different words. Not for this word, but for different words. Dative case is going to be маме. So, we add е to it. Then it's going to be маму. We add у to it. Instrumental case is going to be мамой. We add ой to it. And finally, a prepositional case, маме, we add е to it. And that is it, guys, about this topic. Go ahead and copy this table right here. It has a case, a short information about the case, and then the forms of each of the genders. I think it's going to be helpful to you, guys. So, go ahead and copy that. In the next videos, we're going to talk about cases of adjectives and pronouns. And that's it for today. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you later. Bye-bye.