This article is about cases in Russian, about the types of declension of nouns: about how many of these types there are, on what basis nouns are divided into the first, second and third declension, and also about whether there are indeclinable nouns.
Russian cases
If you substitute different questions for a noun, the endings in it will change:
- What do you have? – Telephone (Nominative case).
- What don't you have? – Phone (Genitive case).
- What do you need to approach? – To the phone (Dative case).
- What did you hide? – Telephone (Accusative case).
- What gift are you happy with? – Phone (Instrumental).
- What are these questions about? – About phone (Prepositional case).
Changing the endings of nouns according to the function performed by the noun in the sentence is called case-changing.
Three types of noun declension
Changing nouns by case is called declension.
As you obviously understood from the examples above,each case has its own endings. If you know the "favorite" endings of each case, you will not be mistaken in the correct spelling of words.
But the difficulty lies in the fact that, for example, in the accusative case of words: mole (mole), shadow (shadow), sun (sun), wife (wife), dad (dad) - different endings.
In order to sort out all this confusion, scientists have divided all nouns into declension types. Nouns of the same declension have similar case endings.
First declension
The first type of noun declension includes masculine and feminine words that end in "-a" and "-ya". For example: foreman, uncle, dormouse, queen, Vitya, Victoria, wine, cow.
| Case | Questions | Examples |
| Nominative | Who? What? | The stick lying on the road interfered with everyone. Lilya was a very beautiful girl with a bad temper. The mayor declared the meeting open. Rokhlya annoyed everyone with his eternal whining. |
| Genitive | Whom? What? | I wonder where the stick started? Lily's son is studying to be an astronaut. The mayor suddenly had a loud, sonorous voice. This clumsy brat's classmates constantly laughed at his failures. |
| Dative | Who? What? | A red ant was crawling on a stick. On this issue, approach Lila, she will help. Petitioners came to the mayor. The shy bastard lacked the couragetake the first step. |
| Accusative | Whom? What? | Victor thoughtfully looked at the gnarled stick. Anton Bogomolov loved Lily very much. Ask the mayor about it. Everyone offended the rot. |
| Instrumental | Who? What? | The man beat the cat with a stick. The boy admired Lily. The villagers were unhappy with the mayor. All the girls laughed at the rohl. |
| Prepositional case | About whom? About what? | What did you find in this stick? Tell me something interesting about Leela. The mayor is wearing a brown suit. Everyone forgot about the rot. |
Second type of declension
The ranks of the second declension include masculine nouns, except for those that end in "-a" and "-ya" and neuter nouns in "-e", "-o".
| Case | Questions | Examples |
| Nominative | Who? What? | The soldier clearly minted a step. The sea has darkened. |
| Genitive | Whom? What? | A soldier hasn't had a day off for a long time. In our area there is not even the smallest sea. |
| Dative | Who? What? | Mom came to the soldier. In the summer, my family and I will definitely go to the sea. |
| Accusative | Whom? What? | The girl left the soldier. Little Egor saw the sea for the first time. |
| Instrumental | Who? What? | Sergeant withcame to the station as a soldier. The artist admired the sea for a long time, not daring to take up the brush. |
| Prepositional case | About whom? About what? | What did Marianne see in this soldier? How I love swimming in the sea! |
Third declension
The third type of declension is feminine nouns with a soft sign at the end of the word.
| Case | Questions | Examples |
| Nominative | Who? What? | The gray dust was indestructible. |
| Genitive | Whom? What? | Dust made my eyes itch and I wanted to sneeze. |
| Dative | Who? What? | Let's fight back the eternal dust! |
| Accusative | Whom? What? | Before you go outside, wipe off the dust. |
| Instrumental | Who? What? | It seemed that even the air was dusted with dust. |
| Prepositional case | About whom? About what? | Pig liked to wallow in the dust. |
Indeclensible nouns
Nouns subway, scoreboard, casino, radio, popsicle, tights, loto, domino, cabaret, pince-nez, highway, square, karate, relay, coffee, porter, taxi, salami, chassis, bet, blinds, kangaroo, menus for cases and numbers do not change. Such nouns are called indeclinable.
| Case | Questions | Singular | Plural |
| Nominative | Who? What? | Eskimo is my favorite ice cream. | There were a lot of popsicles in the fridge. |
| Genitive | Whom? What? | There are no popsicles left in the store. | These popsicle sticks broke. |
| Dative | Who? What? | Eskimo lacks sweetness. | The boys added five glasses of lemonade to the five popsicles they ate. |
| Accusative | Whom? What? | I love popsicle very much. | Dad bought ten popsicles. |
| Instrumental | Who? What? | Alyoshka enjoyed the popsicle and did not notice anything around him. | The Greedy Man wanted to have all the popsicles in the world. |
| Prepositional case | About whom? About what? | Well, what do you think about this popsicle? | These popsicles lack sugar. |
The vast majority of these nouns are borrowed from other languages.
