Thread: Who's afraid of Russian Nouns...? [me!] Русские существительные........

Another thing: The "jazz chants" can be much simpler than the examples I gave above.

К примеру, suppose you want to memorize the endings for singular masculine nouns.

Whether you love Lady Gaga, hate her, or really really hate her, I assume that most people have seen the video for "Bad Romance", in which she marches around in "armadillo shoes" (aka "lobster-claw shoes") and chants:

Walk, walk, fashion, baby,
Work it, move that bitch ca-razy!

Notice that "walk, walk, fa-shion, ba-by" has шесть слогов (six syllables). And, conveniently, there are six noun cases in modern Russian: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional.

So, we can take a Russian noun like волк (wolf) -- an example that I chose because it's masculine and animate, and also happens to sound rather similar to the English word "walk." The singular declension is:

волк (Nom)
волка (Gen)
волку (Dat)
волка (Acc)
волком (Inst)
волке (Prep)

And then we can imagine Lady Gaga in her armadillo shoes, with a wolf on a leash, singing:

"Walk, walk, fa-shion ba-by
Work it, move that bitch, cah-razy!
Волк! -а! -у! -а! -ОМ! -е!
Russian grammar makes me come, hey!
Волк! -а! -у! -а! -ОМ! -е!
Russian grammar makes me come, hey!
Волк! -а! -у! -а! -ОМ! -е!
I'm a free bitch, baby!"

Or, alternatively, you can imagine the волк catching Little Red Gaga Hood ("Красная Гагочка"?) and gobbling her up (because she can't run in those ridiculous shoes), and then she sings this from inside the wolf's tummy...

This example doesn't help you to remember how the different cases function in sentences -- but if you're already familiar with the difference between "dative" and "accusative," and assuming you've learned them in the order N-G-D-A-I-P, then the Lady Gaga example can help you remember the case endings in order for a noun like волк.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

волк (Nom)
волка (Gen)
волку (Dat)
волка (Acc)
волком (Inst)
волке (Prep)

When I was starting to learn the case declensions for singular nouns, I started out with this, what I call vertical method. And immediately found that it doesn't answer the question that is actually upper most in mind. What are the endings for the particular case I want right now? That is, a horizontal method needed, not vertical. In other words the starting point is, we know what case we want, so go right to the endings for that case. Thus the mnemonic for a single case, with order hard m, hard f, i. To get the soft nouns, just an easy spelling change. And neutrals are usually as for masc. Genitive => jаnыtиv, this way I get the ending instantly. Instrumental and dative in a previous post: омstrойmюntal - instrumental, dative => dуtеvи. likewise, ones for Accus, prepositional, easy. And the animate/inanimate point is straightforword.
The vertical method is simply a slower search method, since you have to call up a gender type, then trot through the cases till you get the one you want. It works perfectly, but is less rapid than horizontal method. This horizontal way is like a faster algo.

Originally Posted by Seraph

This horizontal way is like a faster algo.

I totally agree that your horizontal method is beautifully fast and efficient, Seraph. It would've worked perfectly for me when I was first studying Russian in college -- I had taken four years of Latin in high school, so I already had a very clear understanding of how noun declensional paradigms work. (Latin is very "gendered," like Russian, and even has four of the same cases as Russian: Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc.) Since I already knew what the "genitive case" means, and already knew that nouns can have different genders with different case endings, your example of "Genitive => jаnыtиv" immediately makes sense.

On the other hand, if I not studied Latin and therefore had come to Russian as a typical English speaker with no concept of noun inflection and gender categories, then "омstrойmюntal" might have seemed much too abstract for me.

In that case, I would've needed something less compact/efficient but with more detailed information, like my example above of The ol' cowboy with his девушкой played an instrumental version of "Ode to Joy" This rhyme doesn't give you any help for the masc. and i-dec endings, but if you're a beginning student, it does give you the name of the case (instrumental), an example of how the case is used ("with the girl"), and the case ending for a "hard feminine" noun ("-ой").

So, the point is that you can use different approaches to "mnemonic devices" as you progress in Russian -- you may find that in the beginning you benefit from the slow approach of chanting the rhymes, but later you may outgrow this method and find that the quick, efficient algorithm will be most helpful.