Thread: Frustrated with Russian cases...

You'll be disappointed after reading this, so be prepared! Ultimately you have to learn each verb individually. You have to learn which case and which preposition(s) to use with which verb.

Take this example: the verb "помочь/помогать" (to help). It obviously requires direct object: when you help someone, you're doing the act of helping directly to him/her. So you would expect it to take the accusative case. Well, it doesn't. It takes the dative: помочь кому-нибудь.

That's not just one exception to the general rule. There are many more. The only way is to learn verbs one by one: their meaning, their conjugation, the cases and prepositions they take, etc, etc.

Originally Posted by Misha Tal

You'll be disappointed after reading this, so be prepared! Ultimately you have to learn each verb individually. You have to learn which case and which preposition(s) to use with which verb.

Well it is just as prepositions in English.

Take this example: the verb "помочь/помогать" (to help). It obviously requires direct object: when you help someone, you're doing the act of helping directly to him/her. So you would expect it to take the accusative case. Well, it doesn't. It takes the dative: помочь кому-нибудь.

Nope. It is quite logical dative. If you help me then you give me help. You generally do not act directly on me, but on some other object for my sake.

Grammar is the way of thinking.

Originally Posted by it-ogo

Nope. It is quite logical dative. If you help me then you give me help. You generally do not act directly on me, but on some other object for my sake.

Funny enough, even in my native Persian, the verb for helping is said to be "transitive to indirect object". And it doesn't make sense to me. "To help" is not different from "to kiss" in that they're both performed directly. Well, you could "give someone a kiss", but that doesn't make the verb indirect.

Grammar is the way of thinking.

So what? Should I take my hat off to grammar? Well, I won't do that to Russian grammar!

But you don't usually help someone by acting on him directly. You kiss the girl (which is a pretty direct action on the girl ), but you may help someone by doing all kinds of things elsewhere, but not directly to the person themselves.

It's not a transitive verb in German (where there is no such thing as "transitive to the indirect object") and it is "transitive to the indirect object" in English as well, as you can make a passive sentence: I helped him -> he was helped. No such luck in German. I don't know any Indo-European language in which the verb for "help" is transitive.

Originally Posted by Misha Tal

So what? Should I take my hat off to grammar? Well, I won't do that to Russian grammar!

In Iran you take your hat off to grammar, in Russia grammar takes your head off.