
Originally Posted by
Throbert McGee
My general recommendation:
For nouns, always make a habit of memorizing the nominative and genitive singular at the same time. Once you get used to the general case declensions for Russian nouns, you will USUALLY be able to figure at all the other forms of a noun if you know the nom. and gen. sing. (As you progress, you'll learn that for certain categories of nouns it's helpful to memorize the nom. and gen. plural, too, along with the singular. And certain nouns have irregular case forms that you'll deal with later. But you really can't go wrong by always learning the nom. and gen. sg. of any new noun.)!