Thread: cases

I am sure this has come up a few time already... dose anyone have suggestions for understanding the cases.... or the switching of ending of russian words. Please any suggestions share your own expereince with case russian or english.

well how much do you know about them already?

You have to know what cases do what, and from there on its just a matter of memorizing a few endings.

You may or may not know that...

Accusative case is the object of the sentence
Dative is to or for something
Genitive shows posestion
Prepositional, is used with a few prepositions (sometimes called locative, because it is moslty used with locational prepositions. Also considered by some to be the easiest to learn first)
Instrumental shows how something is used, or what is being used.

Nominative is the standard, dictionary form of the word. When you learn a new word, you learn it in nominative case.

So an example would be

Nominative case - Мальчик - boy.
Genative - Спички мальчика - the boy's matches
Dative -Спички мальчику - the matches are for the boy (to the boy)
Istrumental - Спички мальчиком - The matches with the boy
Prepositional - Спички мальчике - the matches, in, on, around the boy
Accusative - спички мальчика (Same as genitive)


Anyways the best thing to do would be maybe memorize the endings from a chart or table. Dont memorize the chart itself, becasue then youll alwasy have to think about that chart in your head when speaking russian, but know the endings well. Then just practice.

Genative - Спички мальчика - the boy's matches
Dative -Спички мальчику - the matches are for the boy (to the boy)
Accusative - спички мальчика (Same as genitive)

I have just a few Questions.
Dative is in the 3rd person?
Accusative & genative mean 2 separate things but have the same sentance structure?

I have just a few Questions.
Dative is in the 3rd person?
Accusative & genative mean 2 separate things but have the same sentance structure?[/quote]

Here is a question i have.

" I gave the hat to John."
Dose this not have 3 cases in it?
nominative,accusative & dative?
If so how would this work?
Would you change all three nouns per their out case?

Originally Posted by mr hyde

" I gave the hat to John."
Dose this not have 3 cases in it?
nominative,accusative & dative?
If so how would this work?
Would you change all three nouns per their out case?

Yes.
Я (nom.) дал шляпу (acc.) Джону (dat.).

Its not that they have the same sentece structure. They just have the same ending.

Masculine accusative takes a genitive ending.

And another example might be "The bear clawed the sh*t out of mike"

The bear (nominative) clawed the sh*t (accusative) out of mike(Genitive) since the *stuff* belongs to mike.

how do Russians learn cases. Do you just absorb it unconsciously as you grow up with the language or do you have to study it in school.
Same question with verbs. Russian verbs are so difficult to conjugate.
Do you just pick that up from being a native speaker?
thanks

ps to the initial poster...study you grammer book over and over and over and...

Originally Posted by sperk

how do Russians learn cases. Do you just absorb it unconsciously as you grow up with the language or do you have to study it in school.

We use cases since we begin to talk so in most cases russian native speaker doesn't have to think what case he/she should use. It's chosen subconsciously.

What's about grammar (when at school) we learn them by memorising questions corresponding to every case.
Именительный - кто, что
Родительный - (рожать ) кого, чего
Дательный - (давать) кому, чему
Винительный - (винить/обвинять) кого, что
Творительный - (творить/создавать) кем, чем
Предложный - о ком, о чем.

To memorise the order of cases (I don't know why our teacher believed that important) we used that verse:
Иван Родил Девчонку, Велел Тащить Пеленку (as you see first letter of each word is first letter of the case name).

I don't think anything of that is useful for foreign learner, though.

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Родительный - (рожать ) кого, чего

It is not quite correct, we should use instead: "Родительный - (нет) кого, чего".
In case of "рожать" it will be not genitive but accusative: "рожать/винить кого, что".

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

Istrumental - Спички с мальчиком - The matches with the boy

Originally Posted by Guin

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Родительный - (рожать ) кого, чего

It is not quite correct, we should use instead: "Родительный - (нет) кого, чего".
In case of "рожать" it will be not genitive but accusative: "рожать/винить кого, что".

Yes, that's so.

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Originally Posted by sperk

how do Russians learn cases. Do you just absorb it unconsciously as you grow up with the language or do you have to study it in school.

We use cases since we begin to talk so in most cases russian native speaker doesn't have to think what case he/she should use. It's chosen subconsciously.

How could you forget? Of course we study cases at school. Before school all Russian kids have to use English or French in conversation. That’s how difficult and complicated Russian language is.

Originally Posted by Guin

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

Istrumental - Спички с мальчиком - The matches with the boy

Yeah dude, i know. If you saw any of the other examples youd notice i didnt put prepositions anywhere. Why start there? I didnt want to confuse the guy. Dont correct me if its not wrong.

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

Originally Posted by Guin

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

Istrumental - Спички с мальчиком - The matches with the boy

Yeah dude, i know. If you saw any of the other examples youd notice i didnt put prepositions anywhere. Why start there? I didnt want to confuse the guy. Dont correct me if its not wrong.

OK, dude, I won't correct you anymore.

Correct me if i say something wrong. But don't correct an insignificant blip in an example. Who cares?

Besides it still could have been translated as "with the boy".

If i said преступник лапатой мальчика убил.

Would you correct it by putting an C in there? No. But its still translated as "with".

You write "Спички мальчиком", but translate "The matches with the boy". It is completely not the same. And that is, IMHO, definitely confusing.

But I've found no sence at all in your "Prepositional" example, both with and without preposition. That's why I've left it without any corrections.

That's what I meant making correction, and I'm sorry if I hurt you somehow.

Originally Posted by Guin

But I've found no sence at all in your "Prepositional" example

Я тоже.

Aaahhh... I understand now. You meant not "The matches are with the boy" - "спички с мальчиком", but something like "The matches (kindle the fire) with the boy" - "спички мальчиком разжигают огонь" Than you are right, sorry!

But I still don't understand your "prepositional" example. Could you please explain what did you mean? Thanks.

I bet Dogboy182 well explained it

And another example might be "The bear clawed the sh*t out of mike"

The bear (nominative) clawed the sh*t (accusative) out of mike(Genitive) since the *stuff* belongs to mike.[/quote]

Hmm I have a question here this an expression of speach ...so there is not really sh-t at all. Its not really being removed from mike would it be accusative? It may sound funny but its almost an adverb sort of a discription of how mike was clawed it dosent directly say it but implies how it was done.
Also being that there is no sh-t Mike wouldnt own it, So then would mike be accusative being that he is being clawed?

I am confused lol !! Am I totally off?

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by Guin

But I've found no sence at all in your "Prepositional" example

Я тоже.

I was simply giving exampkes showing how a noun would change with cases and the other (object) stays the same. If i was giving examples of complete sentences with prepositions then of course i would have been wrong. But i wasn't. So who cares.

And no, you didn't hurt me. I hang around afghans for 8 hours a day, i have tougher skin than that.