The grammar of the Russian language is incredibly vast and at the same time extremely complex. However, if you properly understand the topic that is the problem for you, in the end everything will fall into place.
In this article we will talk about how to distinguish accusative from genitive, and a few more difficulties in declension of nouns and pronouns. And we will start with the basic concepts and rules.
The meaning of cases in Russian
To connect words in sentences, all independent parts of speech can take the necessary form: verbs change in tenses, numbers, persons and pledges, and nouns, numerals, adjectives, participles and pronouns - in numbers and cases. So they exercise their syntactic role in sentences, but for this it is necessary to incline them correctly.
In the Russian language there are only 6 cases, each of them has auxiliary questions and its own endings. However, when choosing the latter, it is strictly necessary to consider the declension of nouns. Plus, all adjectives associated with the words of this part of speech, participles and numerals also depend on it. Thus, in order to learn how to change all these morphological units by cases, you must first study this category in detail.
Declination
The permanent attributes of nouns as part of speech include gender (female, male, middle), declination (1st, 2nd, 3rd, non-declining and divergent words). You should also distinguish between nouns animate and inanimate, common nouns and proper. And it is from the second category that the change in cases, or rather the addition of the necessary ending, depends.
You need to know that the first declension includes nouns of both masculine and feminine gender with the endings “-a” and “-i”, for example, a rainbow, a fox, a man. In the second - masculine with zero ending (son-in-law, genius, yogurt) and all words of the middle gender (window, grief, bed), and in the third - only those feminine words that end in “b” (mother, night, lynx ) However, for the change in cases, the declension of nouns is important only in the singular, since in the plural all words of a given part of speech have the same endings ("-y / -i, -a / -y"), for example, foxes, yoghurts, mothers shores, anchors.
The role of cases
Each of the six cases in the Russian language has its own meaning and purpose in the text. So, with their help, words fulfill their syntactic role, forming a connection with in phrases.
It is also possible to determine from a case to which member of a sentence a given noun refers: if it is in the nominative case, it is a subject, if in the sentence and answers the question “Where?”, In the genitive (“where?”) Or in the accusative (“ where? ”) - this is a circumstance, in other cases - an addition.
As for adjectives and participles, they, regardless of the case, are definitions, as well as ordinal numbers. But quantitative ones are always circumstances with the meaning of measure and degree that answer the question “how much?”.
Not subject to change in cases
Special attention is required to non-declining and divergent nouns. The first of them includes words, mainly borrowed from foreign languages. For example, casinos, popsicles, muffins, planters, coffee, etc. Their shape is unchanged, that is, they cannot be declined in cases, since their ending will remain the same. In this regard, the problem of how to distinguish the accusative from the genitive or which ending to choose when writing, this category of words does not apply, and therefore they are easy to use in the text.
I. p.: In a cup what? - tasty coffee
R. p.: No what? - delicious coffee
D. p.: Add to what? - to delicious coffee
V. p.: Want what? - tasty coffee
T. p.: Smells what? - delicious coffee
P. p.: Think about what? - about delicious coffee
Change in cases outside the rules of declension
However, diverging words represent a significant difficulty, there are only 11 of them (path + 10 to "-me": seed, udder, burden, crown, stirrup, tribe, time, name, flame, banner). When they change in cases, they accept the endings of different declensions. In addition, only the noun in the accusative case or in the nominative of a series of words on "-me" does not require the addition of the suffix "-en" in declension in the singular. In other cases, it is necessary.
However, this is precisely why the question of how to distinguish accusative from genitive does not concern divergent nouns, since their form is in. n. is identical to and. n. In the plural of the genitive case, the suffixes "-n" ("names, tribes") and "-yan" ("stirrups, seeds") are added to them. It’s easier to remember this visually: according to the attached photo, “the table of cases of dissonant nouns”.
Main difficulty
To learn how to cope with the task of distinguishing the accusative from the genitive, you need to learn how to correctly ask questions to words and determine the morphological features of nouns. This will help to take advantage of a little trick by replacing difficult words with those that clearly differ in these two cases, that is, with any example of the 1st declension.
So, if you see in the text an animated noun in the plural, then instead of it you should mentally use the inanimate in the same form. For example, “I see whom? - people” (“I see what? - books” - since it’s not subject, it’s not I. p., Which means we choose vp), “there is no whom? - people” ( "there is nothing? - books" - rp).
If the problem is an animated masculine noun of the 2nd declension, then substitute “mother” for him, and then ask him accusative and genitive questions with auxiliary words. For example, see who? - donkey (see who? - mom - vp), no one? - donkey (no one? - Moms - R. p.). A similar trick should be used to distinguish between the accusative and genitive cases of pronouns (personal and return), and the possessive should be influenced by the nouns associated with them.