Thread: easiest way to learn cases?

всем привет,

я хочу узнать "cases (i didn't know a word for this in russian ", и я не знаю с чего начать. где это хорошее место, чтобы начать? есть только так много.

Большое спасибо!

The word is падеж / pl. падежи
Generally there are 6 cases (there's some more, but don't bother with the rest right now):
Именительный: падеж / падежи
Родительный: падежа / падежей
Дательный: падежу / падежам
Винительный: падеж / падежи
Творительный: падежом / падежами
Предложный: о падеже / о падежах

The bad news - judging from the experience of other forum members there's no 'easy' way to know them. Of course, Russian children (whose native language is Russian) do it faster because they intuitively use them already and there is a mnemonic rule, but unfortunately this rule means nothing for non-natives, so the best way to know them is to remember many rules.
Generally a word is changed from one case to another by using the word ending which in turn depends on the gender of the noun or adjective.
Many groups of words, many rules and the most awful part - many exclusions to the rules.
So, what can I help you with - a little bit strange advice, but the best help you can get is to seek help of the non-native Russian speakers. They will really be more help to you than the natives (well, maybe I am wrong about this, but certainly I really do not even know where to begin the explanation).

I agree with Ramil that there is no easy way to learn cases -- Russian grammar is very complex and will take time, but don't let that discourage you! Here are my tips as a non-native learner:
1. Invest in an actual textbook/workbook, or take a class. Actually writing out exercises will help you remember much better than simply looking at a chart.
2. Be familiar with the terminology of your own native grammar first. Know how to identify things like the subject of a sentence, a direct versus an indirect object, etc. With grammatical cases, the words change depending on what role it is playing in the sentence (essentially, the difference between "I" and "me," but with everything and 6 different ways!), so coming in with that basic knowledge is very helpful.
3. Work on fully understanding one case at a time, with all of its endings, spelling rules, and common exceptions.
4. Work on your Russian a little bit every day, even if just for a short amount of time.

Let me know if you have any specific questions about cases or the process of studying Russian, and good luck!

Grammar tables of Russian cases:

Nominative
Genitive
Dative
Accusative
Instrumental
Prepositional

As far as I can judge, the tricky part is to know the gender of a noun. I understand you should memorize some word endings and also memorize some exceptions.

Originally Posted by Ramil

As far as I can judge, the tricky part is to know the gender of a noun.

I disagree with this, at least from the perspective of a native English speaker. Unlike, say, German or French, where you just have to memorize the genders of nouns, in Russian you can usually tell the gender just by looking at the word (with exceptions, of course). Obviously you have to learn this before you can understand the declensions, but it's really not difficult.

Memorizing all of the case endings is a bit tough (I remember in school we were all pretty upset by the genitive plural!), but really I think the most difficult part is remembering when to use which case, at least coming from a language with no cases. It just takes a combination of memorization and lots of practice -- I always say I hope to be fluent in Russian on my deathbed

You don't have to memorize all the stuff. In fact, that's the slowest and the most ineffective way of learning. Immersion helps in achieving greater results with less efforts. You don't have to come to Russia for this although that would be ideal. Just read unadopted books, watch movies with NO subtitles, read news, etc. The point is to place youself in a situation where your brain would be unable to rely on those little helpers like dictionaries or subtitles. Of course you won't be understanding much, but your brain will nevertheless memorize the word usage, idioms, word endings, etc. Later, you can take a dictionary and look for the parts you memorized. Also, try to write down unfamiliar words you hear in cyrillics without first looking for them. Try to guess at first what they mean and check if your guess is correct later. The whole purpose is to make your brain get used to the Russian environment without any help. Make it, force it to work. When you read - read aloud and don't try to automatically translate the text. Let it just flow. It doesn't matter if you don't understand. At first, try to guess the meaning from the context or simply continue reading and get back later. I know this helped me a lot when I learned English. In fact, it still helps.

I don't know how much you've learned about soft and hard consonants. There's lots of different angles to learn it from. The YouTube channel Russian Grammar has the best angle I've seen. I recommend all of the videos.

An alternative view:

Do you wan to speak Russian or become an expert on Russian grammar?

If the former, then forget cases and learn words. In time all the grammar stuff will come. People have a natural tendency to correct major grammar mistakes (they will repeat what you wanted to say but correctly).

Well, maybe take one case in Russian and learn it (I think it's called Accusative or some nonsense like that in English). You can learn this case fairly easily and it's straightforward how to use it.

One thing that will really help is to learn the grammar of your native language. I don't mean all of the technical words, but stuff like what's the order of the words, why do you say I eat/you eat, but he EATS, etc.

Well, like I said, this an alternative view. I believe if you concentrate on words and start speaking, the rest will come.

Originally Posted by bytemare

An alternative view:

Do you wan to speak Russian or become an expert on Russian grammar?

If the former, then forget cases and learn words. In time all the grammar stuff will come. People have a natural tendency to correct major grammar mistakes (they will repeat what you wanted to say but correctly).

Well, maybe take one case in Russian and learn it (I think it's called Accusative or some nonsense like that in English). You can learn this case fairly easily and it's straightforward how to use it.

One thing that will really help is to learn the grammar of your native language. I don't mean all of the technical words, but stuff like what's the order of the words, why do you say I eat/you eat, but he EATS, etc.

Well, like I said, this an alternative view. I believe if you concentrate on words and start speaking, the rest will come.

Totally disagree. The base of any language is grammar. If you don't spend one two years to learn the basic grammar then you will start learn in the wrong way.
And is not my humble opinion, it is the opinion of all successful language educators.

Originally Posted by Antonio1986

Totally disagree. The base of any language is grammar. If you don't spend one two years to learn the basic grammar then you will start learn in the wrong way.
And is not my humble opinion, it is the opinion of all successful language educators.

I certainly don't have the statistics of successful language educators (language educator = teacher?) with me (nor do I have any idea of what makes a "successful" language educator), but I have met quite a few people who want to speak a language and sit around all day memorizing grammar rules. The problem is that they don't know any words so they can't say anything. So in my original post, I asked what the OP's goal was. What good is it to know how to form certain "cases" if you don't know any words to apply them to?

Вопрос ребром тогда. What good is it to know a lot of words if you can't compose a comprehensive sentence with them due to the lack of grammar knowledge? Also when you learn grammar you don't just learn it without picking up your targeted language words. Learning grammar and learning new words are two sides of the same coin.

So for me it's obvious that grammar is essential if you ever want to speak a language well, unless you live in a place where most of the people always speak your desired language.

I didn't say don't learn grammar, I just said -- learn words. It makes grammar much easier to learn later, that's all.

Okay, but what makes it impossible to still learn words while learning grammar as well?

only time and frustration. I've just seen many people spend more time with grammar than vocabulary.

as a side note, one annoying thing is that the name of the "cases" (and even the word itself) in English seem like a random collection of letters. Take genitive for instance -- what does this mean?? At least in Russian родительный gives some indication of what this "case" is about (well, if you've learned the root word of the name of this case).

By the way, I still think one of the most effective ways of understand this stuff is to understand the grammar of your native language as well.

Originally Posted by bytemare

only time and frustration. I've just seen many people spend more time with grammar than vocabulary.

as a side note, one annoying thing is that the name of the "cases" (and even the word itself) in English seem like a random collection of letters. Take genitive for instance -- what does this mean?? At least in Russian родительный gives some indication of what this "case" is about (well, if you've learned the root word of the name of this case).

By the way, I still think one of the most effective ways of understand this stuff is to understand the grammar of your native language as well.

The answer is b-a-l-a-n-c-e dude.
Learn grammar while learning new words.
Simple and clear.
The guy has to learn at least 3,000 words in order to speak Russian.
If the knowledge of word is not accompanied with the knowledge of grammar it will be exactly like singing separate notes instead of singing whole musical pieces.
I was taught 6 languages and in all cases grammar was the number one.

>>>>I've just seen many people spend more time with grammar than vocabulary.

Then they were not doing it right. There has to be a healthy mixture of those two, so to speak.

>>>>as a side note, one annoying thing is that the name of the "cases" (and even the word itself) in English seem like a random collection of letters. Take genitive for instance -- what does this mean??

Oh man, if you learn grammar learn in the original language otherwise you're going to ask question like this

As a side not of mine:

именительный - от слова имя. Works like that - имя стол, имя тумбочка and so long
родительный - от слова родить. Родить стол (not literally, the case name indicates that you need to use the case with the verb родить), родить ребенка
дательный - от слова дать. Дать денег, дать стулу etc
винительный - от слова винить. Винить зарплату, винить человека
творительный - от слова творить. Творить кисточкой, творить воображением
предложный - от слова предлог, употребляется с предлогами - о куче, о человеке

>>>>>By the way, I still think one of the most effective ways of understand this stuff is to understand the grammar of your native language as well.

Agreed

Originally Posted by iCake

Oh man, if you learn grammar learn in the original language otherwise you're going to ask question like this

As a side not of mine:

именительный - от слова имя. Works like that - имя стол, имя тумбочка and so long
родительный - от слова родить. Родить стол (not literally, the case name indicates that you need to use the case with the verb родить), родить ребенка
дательный - от слова дать. Дать денег, дать стулу etc
винительный - от слова винить. Винить зарплату, винить человека
творительный - от слова творить. Творить кисточкой, творить воображением
предложный - от слова предлог, употребляется с предлогами - о куче, о человеке

This is EXACTLY what I wanted to say, iTortik, you said it better than I. if you know what the words on the left side, then you can easily guess which case to use. Then it's just a matter of learning the actual endings.

Дать денег, дать стулу etc

Тогда уж дать деньгам. Дать деньгам понять, кто в доме хозяин!

Originally Posted by maxmixiv

Тогда уж дать деньгам. Дать деньгам понять, кто в доме хозяин!

Да, да. Запутался чуток, спать хотел