Six real cases, plus some remnants of two more that are no longer used.
The same ones as in German, plus prepositive (typical use is “in” something) and instrumental (typical use is “with” something). They also distinguish between living and non-living, for example, accusative male is the same as nominative male if the subject is non-living (things), but if living (humans and animals) then it is the same as genitive male.
They also love to use genitive for everything. Let’s say you’re counting. One is nominative, two through four is genitive singular, five through twenty and zero is genitive plural. Above twenty the last digit determines the case.
Wanna say a date? Ordinal number in genitive according to the rules above for the day, genitive for the month.
Wanna say x amount of something? The something is genitive. If it is countable, it’s genitive plural, if it’s uncountable, it’s genitive singular. You might think, that’s not so bad, until you discover that Russians consider onions, potatoes, carrots etc as uncountable. Of course you can’t say 5 carrots! Impossible to count them. You must say “5 pieces of carrot” in genitive plural. Duh.
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You might think, that’s not so bad, until you discover that Russians consider onions, potatoes, carrots etc as uncountable. Of course you can’t say 5 carrots! Impossible to count them.
:))) I love these random craziness of languages. And I don’t want to know the reason behind them. Like when I learned the word for “girl” is neuter in German, I was happy but when I learned the reason, it was boring.
I swear Persian might be the easiest language there is.
I have guessed the lack of articles in Russian from the cliché! By the way, how many cases does Russian have?
Six real cases, plus some remnants of two more that are no longer used.
The same ones as in German, plus prepositive (typical use is “in” something) and instrumental (typical use is “with” something). They also distinguish between living and non-living, for example, accusative male is the same as nominative male if the subject is non-living (things), but if living (humans and animals) then it is the same as genitive male.
They also love to use genitive for everything. Let’s say you’re counting. One is nominative, two through four is genitive singular, five through twenty and zero is genitive plural. Above twenty the last digit determines the case.
Wanna say a date? Ordinal number in genitive according to the rules above for the day, genitive for the month.
Wanna say x amount of something? The something is genitive. If it is countable, it’s genitive plural, if it’s uncountable, it’s genitive singular. You might think, that’s not so bad, until you discover that Russians consider onions, potatoes, carrots etc as uncountable. Of course you can’t say 5 carrots! Impossible to count them. You must say “5 pieces of carrot” in genitive plural. Duh.
Please hit like and subscribe to be notified when a new Russian grammar rant is published.
Is it prepositive or locative? I know slovenian has the same cases and they are used pretty similarly.
:))) I love these random craziness of languages. And I don’t want to know the reason behind them. Like when I learned the word for “girl” is neuter in German, I was happy but when I learned the reason, it was boring.
I swear Persian might be the easiest language there is.
The last time I counted them, it was six.