# Forum Learning Russian Language Getting Started with Russian  Frustrated with Russian cases...

## Nichole.

This was the part of my Russian study that I have been dreading for a long time. 
I get what each of the cases do, nominative is the direct subject, accusative is the direct object, prepositional is obvious, etc. The thing that is stumping me is looking at a regular English sentence and trying to find out how to translate it into Russian because in school, I never really cared what an indirect object was and just went through the motions in English class, because, hey, I'm a native English speaker, when am I ever going to need to know how to diagram a sentence? I was dead wrong. 
It just seems like there are so many cases that are in a normal sentence that I kind of get confused. I can look at a Russian sentence and kind of know what it means because the words don't change that much through the cases and I get the basic jist of it if I know the vocabulary that is used, but when it comes to translating something from my L1 language to Russian, I get messed up. Seems backwards. 
Can anyone help me make it easier to separate a sentence's cases so it'll be easier to translate it into Russian? Or do I just need to go back to my 6th grade English class? 
Also, are there any good ways to memorize the case endings other than repetition?

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## chaika

What textbook are you using? Maybe you are trying to get ahead of yourself -- take it step by step and you will get the cases one at a time, with the easy ones first! 
Should be: _Język polski  _

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## TheWholeOrchestra

Hi! Just wanted to chime in that I felt that way about the cases too, though my problem was when someone tried to generally explain cases to me when I just started learning - I didn't really know English grammar, or grammar in general, as a native speaker so had to learn that first to understand Russian. It seems you already have a grasp on that. I think the trick for you, however annoying it is(and it really is because for a long while you really can't say anything or read anything), is to just go through the cases _one at a time_ and master them before you move on. Get a good textbook or workbook that has tons of exercises where you are just constantly putting words into the correct case, finding which verbs require the case, memorizing specific grammar constructions that require a particular case(eg. dative - МНЕ холодно, ЕМУ 6 лет ect), and just writing out random series of adjetives and nouns and put them into every case as practice(we had to do this in my first year _a lot_).  
I promise that when you do this the cases just get ingrained into the way you think, you will remember specific phrases as well and you will no longer have to "translate" in your head like "'I am going to walk the dog in the park'...so 'the dog' is in accusative.....'I' am in nominative...'in the park' is prepositional...okay."

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## Nichole.

I'm using The New Penguin Russian Course, Living Language Beginners Russian, and Schaum's Russian Grammar. 
I know all of the cases' functions and I can understand a Russian sentence if I recognize the words used. The problem comes about when I want to translate a longer sentence in English, to Russian, and there are so many cases, that even if I remember their endings, I still get confused because I forget which case goes with which word, etc. 
I know what each case does, it's just the fact that in a long sentence, I have to take every word and change it... it's just too much and it totally messes me up. Not to mention, I don't have to do this too much in English (we only have like, two cases, and their the same most of the time and we don't have to match them up to gender, except for in pronouns like "he" "him" "she" "her"... so it's realllllyyyy easy). 
It just seems like Russian has too much add-ons when it comes to grammar for me to deal with. I have to worry about gender, having all of the other words agree with that gender, if it's plural or not, and then I have to add cases to all of that. It's alot to deal with and I have no idea how to manage all of that. I always get the practice problems right in my books, it's when it comes to real life situations such as talking on the phone, or even typing this message, that seems a little crazy and a bit overboard.

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## chaika

Yes, cases are not like German, where you had aus bei mit nach seit von zu and those were all the preopositions that governed the dative. Russian has a lot more. But, as I and the Canadian have suggested, just go at it one at a time. Learn one thoroughly then go on to the next. You probably won't be speaking fluently for a couple of years. I have been at it for nearly a lifetime and still screw up all the time.

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## bitpicker

Well, coming from English, look at it like this: 
The nominative case is for the subject, and the subject is the one who (or which) performs the action of the verb. The simplest sentences only have a subject and a verb in English: "I breathe". 
The accusative case is the case for the direct object, which means the person or thing the verb acts on. "I read the book". "I" is subject, "the book" is being read, so it is technically in accusative case. Like in English, in Russian the accusative noun looks exactly the same as the nominative noun except in two areas: if the noun is feminine and ending in -а or -я, then the accusative is -у or -ю respectively. And if the noun refers to a living person or animal and is masculine or neuter or in plural (any gender), then the ending of the genitive case is used. 
The indirect object is less directly connected to the verb. In English, "I give him the book" still has a direct object "the book" which is directly acted on by the verb, and "him" is in what we would call the dative case, which term incidentally comes from the Latin "dare", "to give". We call that the indirect object. Case endings will have to be learned, but you'll find that the -m- sound is actually something even Russian uses in dative case frequently. 
You know when to use the genitive in English, as in "father's car". Unlike English, Russian uses the genitive not just for persons (like saying "the door's handle"), and it is used with a lot of prepositions. 
The instrumental is used for the instrument with which something is being done, and with certain prepositions, and the prepositive, as the name says, also with certain prepositions and never without. 
The endings will have to be learned but it's easier to observe the endings as they are being used by native speakers in order to see their practical usage rather than trying to memorize declension tables and then thinking about which ending to use in which situation.

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## sperk

> The problem comes about when I want to translate a longer sentence in English, to Russian,

 I think translating from English to Russian  should be way down on your to do list. Work from Russian to English and you'll slowly pick up cases. I think the only way to become comfortable with the endings is massive exposure, memorization is not effective. We're talking years here, it's a long term project.

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## 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. 
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.

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## it-ogo

> 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.

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## Misha Tal

> 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! ::

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## Romik

You know, with "kiss" also could be possibilities  :: 
Поцеловать девушку.
Поцеловать девушке руку.

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## bitpicker

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.

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## it-ogo

> 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.  ::

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## TheWholeOrchestra

> I think the only way to become comfortable with the endings is massive exposure, memorization is not effective. We're talking years here, it's a long term project.

  Pretty much. I have been at it for 6 years and I am still crap at it. Just be glad that Russian has only 6 cases and not 15 like Finnish, I know I am!

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## Nichole.

Still kinda confused. I think my problems are: 
1. I don't know enough about English grammar in the first place because why should I have really cared about ever learning it?
2. Whoever created Russian seriously overdid themselves when it comes to grammar. Why does everything have to agree with everything else?
3. I have no idea how I would study this without boring repetition. 
4. I hate grammar vocabulary. Logical dative? Present perfect participle? (All I know is present, past, future, and conjugation.) There's too many P's. 
If you guys can't form a simple phrase in a sentence without kind of arguing about it, how am I supposed to? How do L2 Russian speakers do this without thinking about it? There's no possible way I can just look at a bunch of sentences in Russian and have it start to form subconsciously in my mind over time.  
This is too hard for me to handle. There are too many rules needed in one simple sentence. 
Sure, I can do "Samantha likes ice cream." Samantha is nominative, the verb will be in present tense and agree with it, and ice cream will be in accusative. No problemo.  
It's sentences like (let's take one from this message) "If you guys can't form a simple phrase in a sentence without kind of arguing about it, how am I supposed to?" that are stumping me, and probably need every single Russian grammar rule ever created in the sentence in order for me to make sense. 
What did I get myself into?

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## chaika

If conditional marker
you guys subject with supplemental specification
can't form modal + bare infinitive of "form"
a simple phrase direct object (indef. article + adj. + noun)
in preposition of place
a sentence indef. article + noun [in a language with cases, the ending of "sentence" would be determined by whatever the preposition "in" requires]
without what is this?
kind of and this?
arguing deverbal noun (i.e., a noun that comes from a verb)
about it, preposition + pronoun
how adverb
am I supposed verb with inverted word order
to? suffix of a phrasal verb (which is "to be supposed to" as opposed to the nonphrasal "to suppose") 
There is a book called something like English Grammar for Dummies. Buy it and read it. It is intended for native speakers.

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## fortheether

Nichole,
   I have no help for you in Russian.  I am learning Russian and also hated English grammar as a kid.  I am actually learning more about English now then in school.  From your note maybe take the language in smaller steps then you are?  Your example sentence is a complicated one, no?   
Scott      

> Still kinda confused. I think my problems are: 
> 1. I don't know enough about English grammar in the first place because why should I have really cared about ever learning it?
> 2. Whoever created Russian seriously overdid themselves when it comes to grammar. Why does everything have to agree with everything else?
> 3. I have no idea how I would study this without boring repetition. 
> 4. I hate grammar vocabulary. Logical dative? Present perfect participle? (All I know is present, past, future, and conjugation.) There's too many P's. 
> If you guys can't form a simple phrase in a sentence without kind of arguing about it, how am I supposed to? How do L2 Russian speakers do this without thinking about it? There's no possible way I can just look at a bunch of sentences in Russian and have it start to form subconsciously in my mind over time.  
> This is too hard for me to handle. There are too many rules needed in one simple sentence. 
> Sure, I can do "Samantha likes ice cream." Samantha is nominative, the verb will be in present tense and agree with it, and ice cream will be in accusative. No problemo.  
> It's sentences like (let's take one from this message) "If you guys can't form a simple phrase in a sentence without kind of arguing about it, how am I supposed to?" that are stumping me, and probably need every single Russian grammar rule ever created in the sentence in order for me to make sense. 
> What did I get myself into?

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## Nichole.

> Nichole,
>    I have no help for you in Russian.  I am learning Russian and also hated English grammar as a kid.  I am actually learning more about English now then in school.  From your note maybe take the language in smaller steps then you are?  Your example sentence is a complicated one, no?

 My ego is really preventing me from doing things. Sure, I know I need to start with smaller sentences, but I'm so used to being praised in school for my supposedly "wonderful and mature speech", that when I don't know how do translate a simple sentence from my own language into my target language, it bumps me down a peg.  
It's also extremely frustrating when I know exactly what each case does, and I can translate something from Russian to English, but I can't figure out how to translate something from my own language into my target language because I never cared for grammar, so now, I'm confused about so many things, and I can't keep track of them all at once, which sends me into a bit of a tizzy. 
There's too much consternation.

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## sperk

> My ego is really preventing me from doing things.

 Learning languages is great for humility, as soon as you think you know a lot you realize you don't know much at all.

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## Nichole.

Yep. 
Does anyone have any ideas on how I could learn how to place these cases? (Excluding ways that would bore me to no extent...)

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## Misha Tal

The case system is a tool, Nichole. At first it might be hard to handle, but once you learn it you'll be glad that it exists. In my opinion the Russian grammar is _much_ more flexible than the English grammar, thanks to those crazy cases. 
The hardest part for me is feminine singular adjective endings: four of them are identical, and while that makes it easier to learn, it also makes it harder to _comprehend_: Sometimes you practically have to guess from the contex whether it is genitive, dative, prepositional, or instrumental.

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## Nichole.

I just see Russian grammar as too overloaded. Like those mega fries you can get in American pizza parlors. Sure, fries have lots of fat in them, but hey, let's throw on three different cheeses and some bacon with Ranch dressing on the side just so you understand how much fat is in them.  
Maybe I like English grammar more because I was raised with it, and I do see it's flaws, but in my mind, it's way more flexible than Russian. We have no gender (so we don't have to worry about that when forming sentences... well except for she and he, and if it's something that doesn't have a biological gender... tah-dah, it's it.), virtually no cases (sure, we have some, but only like, 2), if you are using numbers in a sentence, anything over one is ended in either "s" or "ies", and that brings me to our plurals, which are just that, unless you are a scholar and you like using Latin words like "bacterium" (which most of the general public doesn't). The only con I can think of are our pesky verb tenses (yea, we went overboard on those, hehe). 
Sure, Russian can change it's word order willy-nilly, but that's the only thing I can think of. 
But what am I complaining about? I chose this as the language I wanted to study, and I'm far too deep to want to stop now. Yea, cases are just an everyday thing and I'm going to have to get over it, but it just seems like the English part of my brain is on overload and I want everything to act like it is in English (which is impossible, but I still wish)!

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## it-ogo

> Does anyone have any ideas on how I could learn how to place these cases? (Excluding ways that would bore me to no extent...)

 There are basically two methods to learn foreign language for an adult person.
1) Boring one. Few hours per day do some exercises, follow some course, read and speak. Normally theory will help you in this method, because theoretical rules anyway are much simpler than the language as it is.
2) Adventurous one. Come to the corresponding country, communicate much, and try to survive without using any language but local. Here you can avoid most formal rules etc. and get even better result than for the first method. If survived. 
Few encouraging facts. 1)Russian is NOT the world most difficult language. (Many people say that Japanese is the most difficult.) 2) English and Russian are languages of the same family so they are much closer than many others. 3) Russian perfectly correct literary speech is not mastered even by many (most?) Russians, so perfection is not so necessary. 4)Normally in a private conversation Russians would not mind if you confuse few cases and would be pleased by the very fact of your speaking Russian (if your speech is intelligible of course).

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## it-ogo

> Maybe I like English grammar more because I was raised with it, and I do see it's flaws, but in my mind, it's way more flexible than Russian. We have no gender (so we don't have to worry about that when forming sentences...

 Native speakers do not worry about that, they use it automatically.  
Yep, English has exceptionally simple basics that makes it very good international language. So you can skip learning other languages if you do not enjoy. Learning languages is like a good investment to the future pleasure. The harder you work now the more you will enjoy later. The situation is the same as with high/classical/elite art/literature/music.  ::

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## Nichole.

> 2) Adventurous one. Come to the corresponding country, communicate much, and try to survive without using any language but local. Here you can avoid most formal rules etc. and get even better result than for the first method. If survived.

 I can't do that because I only just turned 15, so I guess I'll just have to hang out in Northeast Philly for a bit. That place is soooo Russian.   

> Native speakers do not worry about that, they use it automatically.

 Yea, but what about L2 speakers?

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## it-ogo

> Yea, but what about L2 speakers?

 That is very individual. Some people after some efforts get used to it and starts to speak automatically. Some, including even professional Russian teachers etc., get good theory but have problems of fluent speaking forever.  ::  No guarantee.

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## fortheether

> I can't do that because I only just turned 15, so I guess I'll just have to hang out in Northeast Philly for a bit. That place is soooo Russian.   
> Yea, but what about L2 speakers?

 Is there Russian stores, restaurants etc. in Northeast Philadelphia?  If so, what is there?   I'm live about 60 miles from Philadelphia. 
Scott

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## bitpicker

> I just see Russian grammar as too overloaded.

 You notice all the things Russian has but English doesn't have, and that makes it seem overloaded. I'm sure the same is true vice versa: looking at English with Russian eyes, one could ask why there are so bloody many different tenses, what articles are for and why the writing is so damn different from the spoken word.  
Looking at both languages from my viewpoint as a native speaker of German I could ask why English needs a progressive aspect to its verbs and what's so hot about perfective verbs in Russian. I could say that the English lack of cases is just as insane as having six. Four is the truth.  ::  
But all that is moot. Different languages have different mechanisms, and the hard parts of each language lie in the mechanisms which are unlike the ones of your native language. English happens to be on one end of the scale of Indo-European languages, the end which has dropped most of the inflecting grammatival features (along with Persian, I'm told). On the other end you have heavily inflected languages like Russian, but even those have come quite far, as the process of losing grammatical inflection is going on in all languages of the family. If you wanted to learn Sanskrit, the oldest written Indo-European language, you'd have to deal with up to 792 distinct verb forms _per verb_. The worst verb in English has eight (be).  
You should try to accept each grammatical feature as a given and try to deal with them one at a time. I think that the most complicated and weird features of a language are what makes the language intriguing.  ::

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## Nichole.

> Is there Russian stores, restaurants etc. in Northeast Philadelphia?  If so, what is there?   I'm live about 60 miles from Philadelphia. 
> Scott

 They have restaurants, Russian music and book stores, a supermarket, many of the store signs are also written in Russian. 
In fact, my bus used to drive through there on the way to my elementary school, so the first Russian words I ever learned when I was 9: аптека, столовая, and книги from the signs on the storefronts we passed.

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## fortheether

> They have restaurants, Russian music and book stores, a supermarket, many of the store signs are also written in Russian. 
> In fact, my bus used to drive through there on the way to my elementary school, so the first Russian words I ever learned when I was 9: аптека, столовая, and книги from the signs on the storefronts we passed.

 This is the section of the town:  Bustleton, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 
I definitely going to check out the book stores and eat at a restaurant there - Anything else you recommend doing there?   
Thank you, 
Scott

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## vox05

> Yep. 
> Does anyone have any ideas on how I could learn how to place these cases? (Excluding ways that would bore me to no extent...)

 Read/listen (whatever you understand better) material with correct case usage. I doubt that one can learn how to actually use anything by drilling manual/grammar books. For questions like 'why is it used that way?' - i.e. reference manual, yes.

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## vox05

> Maybe I like English grammar more because I was raised with it, and I do see it's flaws,

 Those precious moments....

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## Nichole.

I'm a native speaker, the difference between an apostrophe in a word that sounds exactly like another word doesn't make any of a difference in the logical thinking of other speakers who don't even see that apostrophe because they are on English auto pilot. So their!  ::

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## Demonic_Duck

> I'm a native speaker, the difference between an apostrophe in a word that sounds exactly like another word doesn't make any of a difference in the logical thinking of other speakers who don't even see that apostrophe because they are on English auto pilot. So *their*!

 lol, I see what you did there  ::  
But that proves the point exactly... Russian people don't _have_ to think about all this grammar, they just know it instinctively. But even native Russians make Russian grammar mistakes sometimes! 
As for learning cases, it can help by translating it from English -> Runglish -> Russian. 
Example:
"I want to help you" -> "I want to help to you" -> "я хочу помочь вам"
or
"I have no pets" -> "of me there is none of pets" -> "у меня нет домашних животных"

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## decsis

Hi Nichole  
I can really understand your frustration. I'm a native German speaker and I'm learning Russian since ..8 month I guess, and even for me cases are not that easy. Even though, it's a huge advantage to be a German speaker, cause we have 4 cases in German (Nom, Acc, Dat, Gen) and they behave pretty similar like in russian.
To take Misha Tals example with "помочь/помогать". It's "Helfen" in German. Ich helfe dir (I help you). Dir is dativ. So it's very often exactly like in russian. Even though it's not always like that. For example, "Я тебя поздравляю" is accusative while in german, we use Dative here. But anyway, it's from big help to have even 4 cases already. I can really understand your problems as you are coming from English, cause I can most of the time think like I'm doing it in German and then I already know how it has to be in Russian. But of course I still have to learn all those exceptions and it's not always like in German.  

> 2. Whoever created Russian seriously overdid themselves when it comes to grammar. Why does everything have to agree with everything else?

 Actually..Russian does sound soooo awesome because words nearly always agree with each other...they kind of rhyme, for example the adjectives with the substantives. I asked myself the same "Why the hell is Russians grammar that complex?" but then again....it makes Russians sound as it is and gosh, I wouldn't like to miss it.
But yeah I have to agree, Russian is soooooo difficult to learn as a foreigner. I've never heard someone not from Russia/Ukraine speaking it good, but I'm sure that in the masterrussians community are a lot of people that mastered it and I have such a huge respect of them. When I started with Russian...I was listening to people in the internet who said, that russian isn't harder than languages like Spanish, French and so on...but gosh they were wrong. Maybe, on paper, it isn't harder..because it's a pretty logical language and doesn't has more exceptions than...German for example...even less than we have in German...but it's soooo confusing with all those different endings and stuff.
I don't want to frustrate you, but have you already seen those "Perfective and imperfective" aspects of verbs? For me, they are even more confusing than the cases. But maybe they will be easier for you cause the tenses are more like in English. I've never understood the English cases...there are soooooo many and I will probably never get used to them. 
And I can tell you....since I'm learning russian...my knowledge of the German grammar has been increased greatly....and I've a girlfriend from the Ukraine and she is studying German....she askes me alot about German cases and I have to tell her all the time, that I never have to think about it...I'm doing it instinctively..I don't have to think which case I'm using, I just doing it right as I'm speaking and hearing that language since my birth. So it must be the same in Russian and any other language too. It's a veeeeeery long process and it's not done just with learning the basics and grammar, you have to use it, you have to repeat it and practise it over years.  
Sorry for my bad English  ::

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## Demonic_Duck

> I don't want to frustrate you, but have you already seen those "Perfective and imperfective" aspects of verbs? For me, they are even more confusing than the cases. But maybe they will be easier for you cause the tenses are more like in English. I've never understood the English *cases*...there are soooooo many and I will probably never get used to them.

 You mean tenses  ::  
I can assure you, perfective vs. imperfective is still pretty damn difficult/confusing for English speakers too. Although the fact that they have some correlation with our tenses helps somewhat.

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## Nichole.

Actually imperfective and perfective don't give me any trouble at all. They seem just like English.

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## Eric C.

> Actually imperfective and perfective don't give me any trouble at all. They seem just like English.

 Not exactly. Russian aspects rather specify whether the action is fully completed/done. For example, if we say something like "He did his task yesterday", we can't say for sure if he finished the task while in Russian we can say "Он делал вчера своё задание"/"Он сделал вчера своё задание", and the first one would mean we aren't sure if he finished it (but most likely not) while the second one would mean he did for sure.

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## Nichole.

But you can do that in English as well, just by changing one word or answerng somebody's question where it would be evident. It's not giving me any trouble. I can't expect everything to be hard for me in Russian. It just seems like the cases are giving me a run for my money.

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## Throbert McGee

> Actually imperfective and perfective don't give me any trouble at all. They seem just like English.

 Heh-heh-heh! Oh, how naive she is!  ::  
Trust me, Nichole, as you progress in your study of Russian, the imperfective/perfective distinction WILL give you some frustration, in certain contexts. For example, in translating a negated past-tense English sentence such as "She didn't read that book." -- should it be *Она не читала эту книгу* or *Она** не прочитала* *эту* *книгу*?  
But going back to noun cases: I began studying Russian in college, but had already taken four years of Latin in high school. And the Latin was a huge help for learning Russian -- not because Russian and Latin are so similar, but because they're both far more inflected than English, and I had already become thoroughly familiar with the "general concept" of noun/adjective cases from studying Latin. (In Latin, there are five basic cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative. So four out of five of them have the same names and more or less the same functions as in Russian, while the Latin "ablative" case to some extent* combines the functions of the Russian instrumental and locative.) 
So, Nichole, just as learning the Latin cases gave me an advantage when I started studying Russian, if you can master the Russian cases you'll have some advantage if you decide to study other languages in the future.  _*I stress, "to some extent," because the ablative is arguably the most complicated Latin case, and does a lot more besides expressing instrument and location!_

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## Nichole.

About imperfective/perfective: No really. Why isn't anybody believing me? I've read tge chapters on this particular subject in several, different Russian grammar books and it's not that hard for me to grasp. Actually pretty easy if you ask me. To answer your question, the answer would be "She didn't read the book." stressing if she didn't read through it completely or she just didn't read it at all. Quite simple if you ask me, not to sound pompous or anything. 
About cases: As much as cases seem like the most *enter 20 curse words of your choice here* thing in the history of languages (next to English spelling, and how we haven't had a modern spelling reform yet because we're too lazy), I have to learn them. Cases are needed for me to be understood, but that doesn't mean I don't think they're complete BS... because I hate them.

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## Marcus

Ablative is the most complicated case because it consists of three old cases: instrumental, locative and ablative (separative) itself. The last function is acomplished by Genenetive in Russian. Compare prepositions: ex, ab and de with ablative in Latin and от, из, с (спрыгнуть с дерева) with genetive in Russian. 
Она не читала means 'She has never started reading' Она не прочитала means 'she has not finished reading'
Может быть, перейдём на русский язык?

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## Demonic_Duck

> About cases: As much as cases seem like the most *enter 20 curse words of your choice here* thing in the history of languages (next to English spelling, and how we haven't had a modern spelling reform yet because we're too lazy), I have to learn them. Cases are needed for me to be understood, but that doesn't mean I don't think they're complete BS... because I hate them.

 I really think you're overreacting to be honest, yes they are difficult and annoying, but no they are not entirely useless and there is generally some logic to how they're used (although sometimes the logic seems unfathomable). Because word order in Russian is flexible, cases are needed to show how the words relate to one another. A Russian speaker learning English might as well complain, "the specific word order in English is useless, why do I have to learn it?" but they'd be missing the point. Of course it's not useless, it's just another way of showing the relationship between words. As for English spelling, yes it is definitely annoying, but again it's not entirely useless, as it can help to show the etymology of words. 
And I still think you're underestimating how difficult perfective/imperfective verbs can be sometimes, but you seem intelligent so perhaps you've just grasped the concept better than me. I think the main things I find difficult about it are firstly that imperfective verbs don't always correspond perfectly (no pun intended) with their perfect forms, and vice-versa. You sometimes get an imperfective verb with two perfective forms with subtly different meanings, or an imperfective which has no perfective form, or a perfective with no imperfective, etc. And there's also the seeming complete randomness about how to actually make a perfective form out of an imperfective (do I add a prefix or take away a syllable? Should I prefix it with по- or с- or some other prefix? Or, in the case of «покупать», should I in fact remove the по- in order to make it into the perfective «купить»?) And, before you've even started to think about what the appropriate prefix should be, there are also some situations where you don't _know_ if the action has been completed, etc.

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## Marcus

Падежи -  формальная вещь: определённый предлог или глагол требуют определённого падежа. Виды глаголов гораздо труднее для понимания и часто требуют индивидуального подхода.

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## oileanach

Has anyone used this book? Would you recommend it for Nichole's particular difficulties? I used the version for Latin students years ago and it was a boon.  Amazon.com: English Grammar for Students of Russian: The Study Guide for Those Learning Russian (English grammar series) (9780934034210): Edwina Jannie Cruise: Books#_

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## Trzeci_Wymiar

The cases aren't too daunting, in my opinion - of course, you get frustrated every once in a while when you're first learning them, it feels impossible, you get fed up. It's all very natural.  
But eventually, they'll start clicking. Trust me. And it does require some knowledge of basic grammatical concepts to begin with ... and if you don't have a basic understanding of grammar to begin with, by the time you learn cases you'll have a firm conceptual grasp of grammar. 
Don't get disheartened! Don't give up. There is nothing unlearnable. 
What I find helped me make leaps and bounds with cases - and it's not too hard - is going through texts (whether you understand them or not makes ABSOLUTELY no difference) and just highlight, word for word, the case endings, and determine what they are and what relation they bear to the words around them. After doing this a few times you'll begin to recognize certain case endings automatically, until finally, voila, you'll have a good grasp of the cases, and you'll maybe have learned something else about Russian in the process.

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## Trzeci_Wymiar

> Has anyone used this book? Would you recommend it for Nichole's particular difficulties? I used the version for Latin students years ago and it was a boon.  Amazon.com: English Grammar for Students of Russian: The Study Guide for Those Learning Russian (English grammar series) (9780934034210): Edwina Jannie Cruise: Books#_

 I was assigned this book, *oileanach*, when I took a semester of Russian at college. I didn't need it, but I would indeed recommend it if the person is starting with little or no working knowledge of basic grammatical concepts, such as direct objects, indirect objects, possessives, verbs, transitive vs. intransitive. For me, the book was a cakewalk, but I can see its particular value for people with no previous exposure to these necessary concepts.

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## Demonic_Duck

> I was assigned this book, *oileanach*, when I took a semester of Russian at college. I didn't need it, but I would indeed recommend it if the person is starting with little or no working knowledge of basic grammatical concepts, such as direct objects, indirect objects, possessives, verbs, transitive vs. intransitive. For me, the book was a cakewalk, but I can see its particular value for people with no previous exposure to these necessary concepts.

 Yeah I looked at the preview on amazon for that book and it all looked like pretty basic stuff (although admittedly the preview was mostly taken from the beginning of the book).

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