Thread: Воров заинтересуют только деньги

How come воры is written as genitive and not nominative? I'm starting a phrase with it after all. Doesn't seem to make sense. What am I missing? What's hidden here?

Valda, as I said to you a lot of times, you should learn how to recognize where an object is and where a subject is. I'm sure you know that word order doesn't matter in Russian (at least, it's not so important).
In this phares "воров заинтересуют только деньги" the subject is "деньги" (nominative, as a subject must be) and an object is "воров" (plural accusative). You are confused because of the word order. You used to think if a word is at the begining of the sentence, it's a subject. But it's true only in English. You can't think the same way when you read or write in Russian.
So, I can rewrite the phrase for you: "Только деньги заинтересуют воров" (= Only money will interest the thieves). Now the subject "деньги" is at the first place.
You could ask me why do we change word order? Because if you change the order, it adds some expression, irony, "laziness" or other nuances to the sentence. In short, that's a way to express a subtle emotion (I guess you can't understand it now, but I'm sure someday you can figure it out).

P.S. If you need to study this question better, I can give you a short lesson in the chat. If you wish, of course.

Originally Posted by Paul G.

In this phares "воров заинтересуют только деньги" the subject is "деньги" (nominative, as a subject must be) and an object is "воров" (plural genitive).

Sorry, a minor but important correction.

"Воров" here is not in genitive, but in accusative. Since "вор" is animate, its accusative is the same as genitive.
But it's important to understand that it is accusative, since the direct object normally takes accusative, and this phrase is not an exception.

If you replace it with a singular feminine noun, you will see the difference:

Сестру заинтересуют только деньги. Сестру - accusative (not genitive, genitive is сестры).


And here is an example to illustrate what Paul said:
Let's compare two sentences. Сын зовёт отца. and Сына зовёт отец.

Сын (nom) зовёт отца (acc). - Son calls (his) father. Here, you translate it word by word.
Сына (acc) зовёт отец (nom). - How would you translate this one? Right! Father calls (his) son.

In Russian, Сын зовёт отца = Отца зовёт сын. Отец зовёт сына = Сына зовёт отец.

Ahhh...Oops. I'm always under the impression that the -ов addition for plural is automaically genitive *slaps forehead*, I forgot it can appear with the accusative as well. Now it actually makes a lot of sense.

Thanks, Paul, Bob.

Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман

"Воров" here is not in genitive, but in accusative.

What a shame! Of course, it's accusative. I explain it almost every week in the chat.