This article is about cases in the Russian language, about types of declension of nouns: about how many of these types exist, on what basis nouns are divided into first, second and third declension, as well as whether there are indeclinable nouns in Russian.
Cases in Russian
If you substitute various questions for the noun, then the endings in it will change:
- What do you have? - Phone (Nominative).
- What don't you have? - Phone (Genitive).
- What do you need to approach? - To the phone (Dative case).
- What did you hide? - Phone (Accusative).
- What gift are you satisfied with? - By phone (Correct case).
- What are these questions about? - About the phone (Prepositional case).
Changing the endings of nouns in accordance with the function performed by a noun in a sentence is called a case change.
Three types of declension of nouns
Change of nouns in cases is called declension.
As you obviously understood from the examples above, each case has its own endings. If you know the "favorite" endings of each case, then you will not be mistaken in the correct spelling of words.
But the difficulty lies in the fact that, for example, in the accusative case of the words: mole (mole), shadow (shadow), sun (sun), wife (wife), dad (dad) - different endings.
In order to understand all this confusion, scientists divided all nouns into types of declension. Nouns of the same declension have similar case endings.
First decline
The first type of declension of nouns includes masculine and feminine words that end in ā-aā and ā-iā. For example: foreman, uncle, sleepyhead, queen, Vitya, Victoria, wine, cow.
Case | Questions | Examples |
| Nominative case | Who! What? | A stick lying on the road disturbed everyone and everyone. Lily was a very beautiful girl with a bad temper. The mayor declared the meeting open. Rokhlya annoyed everyone with his eternal nagging. |
| Genitive | Whom? What? | I wonder where the stick began? Lily's son is studying as an astronaut. The mayor suddenly had a loud, sonorous voice. Classmates of this awkward dying girl constantly laughed at his failures. |
| Dative | To whom? Why? | A red ant crawled over a stick. On this issue, come to Leela, she will help. Petitioners came to the mayor. The shy junk did not have the courage to take the first step. |
| Accusative | Whom? What? | Victor looked thoughtfully at the clumsy stick. Anton Bogomolov loved Lily very much. Ask the mayor about this. Everyone offended the mug. |
| Instrumental case | By whom? Than? | The man beat the cat with a stick. The boy admired Lily. The villagers were unhappy with the mayor. All the girls laughed at the junk. |
| Prepositional | About whom? About what? | What did you find in this stick? Tell me something interesting about Leela. A brown suit is put on the mayor. Everyone has forgotten about junk. |
Second type of declination
The second declension includes masculine nouns, except for those ending in ā-aā and ā-iā and nouns of the secondary gender in ā-eā, ā-oā.
Case | Questions | Examples |
| Nominative case | Who! What? | The soldier clearly minted a step. The sea has darkened. |
| Genitive | Whom? What? | The soldier had not had a weekend. In our area there is not even the smallest sea. |
| Dative | To whom? Why? | Mom came to the soldier. In the summer, my family and I will definitely go to the sea. |
| Accusative | Whom? What? | The girl left the soldier. Little Egor first saw the sea. |
| Instrumental case | By whom? Than? | The sergeant and the soldier arrived at the station. The artist admired the sea for a long time, not daring to take up a brush. |
| Prepositional | About whom? About what? | What did Marianne find in this soldier? How I love to swim in the sea! |
Third declension
The third type of declension is feminine nouns with a soft sign at the end of a word.
Case | Questions | Examples |
| Nominative case | Who! What? | The gray dust was indestructible. |
| Genitive | Whom? What? | Dust was scratching my eyes and I wanted to sneeze. |
| Dative | To whom? Why? | Let's fight back the eternal dust! |
| Accusative | Whom? What? | Wipe off the dust before you go outside. |
| Instrumental case | By whom? Than? | It seemed that even the air was dusted with dust. |
| Prepositional | About whom? About what? | Piglet liked to wallow in the dust. |
Declined Nouns
Nouns of metro, scoreboard, casino, radio, popsicle, tights, lotto, domino, cabaret, pince, highway, square, karate, relay, coffee, porter, taxi, salami, chassis, bet, blinds, kangaroo, case menu and numbers do not change. Such nouns are called indeclinable.
| Case | Questions | Singular | Plural |
| Nominative case | Who! What? | Eskimo is my favorite ice cream. | There was a lot of popsicle in the fridge. |
| Genitive | Whom? What? | There are no popsicles left in the store. | These popsicles have broken sticks. |
| Dative | To whom? Why? | Eskimo is not enough sweets. | To the five eaten popsicle boys added five glasses of lemonade. |
| Accusative | Whom? What? | I like popsicle very much. | Dad bought ten popsicle. |
| Instrumental case | By whom? Than? | Alyosha enjoyed popsicle and did not notice anything around him. | Zhadina wanted to possess all the popsicle in the world. |
| Prepositional | About whom? About what? | Well, what do you say about this popsicle? | These popsicles lack sugar. |
The vast majority of these nouns are borrowed from other languages.