Thread: Russian cases help.

He gave the dog(собака) to my friend(мой друг).
Он дал собаку к моему другу.

What are the cases for 'dog' and 'my friend).
And should I change the ending according to the case for only the word 'friend' or 'my friend' (мой друг-> моему другу) in this sentence?

You do not need the preposition "к" in this sentence.

'my friend' is in the dative case since it is the indirect object, and you do need to decline both words (like you already did), the noun and the adjectives that describe it will always match in case, number, and gender.

'собаку' is in the accusative since it is the direct object of the sentence.

Woot, I got it. Thanks.

What about 'I gave my dog to my friend.'

Also how do I change
My ->мой, моя, моё, мои to the 6 cases. The pattern is confusing for newbies like me. I can't apply even when I have the resouces regarding the 6 cases. Haha.

You declined "my" correctly in the phrase "to my friend," it is the same concept for any other part of speech.

Собака is a feminine word, so if you are going to use the possessive pronoun "мой" is needs to be feminine (моя) as well since it is describing the dog. Therefore, when you decline собака into accusative case (собаку), any adjective describing it needs to match, thus 'моя' becomes 'мою'.

"I gave my dog to my friend."
"Я дал мою собаку моему другу."

Here is a chart for the declension of "мой"
http://www.study-languages-online.co...ssive-pronouns

Don't be overwhelmed by it, it will look like a lot at first but it becomes much more understandable when you practice, and recognize patterns.

I must admit that russian grammar is so much harder than english. Memorizing the declension for gender, cases, spelling rules is not easy. The greatest obstacle I'm facing is that I can't remember most of the nouns or adjective and till then, I can't go anyway further.

Originally Posted by g2gcya

I must admit that russian grammar is so much harder than english. Memorizing the declension for gender, cases, spelling rules is not easy. The greatest obstacle I'm facing is that I can't remember most of the nouns or adjective and till then, I can't go anyway further.

Adjectives in fact "only" have 12 (or 13) different forms with a completely uniform pattern for all the adjectives with no exceptions and (yay!) no stress shift. Feminine paradigm is the easiest to memorize (-ая for Nominative, -ую for Accusative, -ой for everything else). Now, "spelling rules" do affect that pattern (otherwise you would need to learn quite a bit more).
All of the forms are important, but in case you cannot fit them all into your head that fast, start with neuter/zero-ending masculine declension and feminine declension patterns (брат/стул/гвоздь/окно/море, река/мама/папа). Pay attention to Genitive, as it is the most often used case with a very large number of constructions and some twenty prepositions governing it. If you don't get it, you certainly "can't go any further". Besides, for zero-ending masculine/neuter nouns Accusative case (direct object, as in "I wrote a letter") will be the same as either Genitive or Accusative. Now, you learn Accusative for feminine - and you can use all these nouns as direct objects. Then there are zero-ending feminine nouns, which have only three different forms. Then tackle the rest of the cases and the plural paradigm in the order you see reasonable, depending on the texts you use. After all, you can always apply brute force and just memorize the declensions in a week or so using some specific words in flashcards as an example. Genitive plural is the only one significantly harder, as its paradigm has more variation than one would expect. And, yeah... stress patterns are not as straightforward as declension patterns.