🤳🏿 🀄️ 👲🏾 How to determine the case in Russian 🏇🏼 ⬜️ 👨🏾‍⚖️

In this article, we will provide information on how to correctly determine the cases of nouns in the Russian language, as well as on how the change in cases and numbers is called.

Let's try to ask some questions to the noun “pencil” (“pencils”):

What do you have? - A pencil. Pencils.
What is not visible in the dark? - Pencil. Pencils.
What does a sharpener need? - A pencil. Pencils.
What did you hide? - A pencil. Pencils.
What is the picture drawn with? - Pencil. With pencils.
What are we talking about now? - About the pencil. About pencils.

What conclusion can be made by carefully studying the questions and answers to them? Depending on the questions, the endings in the answers vary.

Case as a grammatical category

The relation to the subject designated by a noun expresses the case. In Russian there are six of them. Each of them has its own questions, which will always tell you how to determine the case.

Case	Question to animate noun	Examples of animated nouns	Question to an inanimate noun	Examples of inanimate nouns
Nominative	Who!	cat, sparrow, daughter, child	What?	jacket, rye, the sun
Genitive	Whom?	cats, sparrows, daughters, children	What?	sweatshirts, rye, the sun
Dative	To whom?	cat, sparrow, daughter, child	Why?	sweater, rye, the sun
Accusative	Whom?	cat, sparrow, daughter, child	What?	sweater, rye, the sun
Instrumental case	By whom?	cat, sparrow, daughter, child	Than?	jacket, rye, the sun
Prepositional	About whom?	about a cat, about a sparrow, about a daughter, about a child	About what?	about a jacket, about rye, about the sun

Thus, the case is needed so that the word harmoniously combines with other words.

Nominative

Before you understand how to determine the case, you need to learn as much as possible about each of them.

The initial form of the noun, answering the questions "who? What?" - This is a form of the nominative case, and many words in this case coincide with the root. By the way, the noun in the nominative case, as a rule, is one of the main members of the sentence.

Indirect cases

Indirect we call all five cases, except nominative.

Genitive - was originally a case of kinship: the father’s son, a tree branch, a Ford plant. Nouns in this case answer the questions "who? Why?" In modern Russian, this case has acquired additional meanings.
The dative case (to whom? Why?) In ancient times was called generous. This is understandable, since one of the meanings of this case is the designation of the subject, substance, person or phenomenon for which the action is performed.

One of the accusative questions is the same as in the genitive, “whom?”, The other is in the nominative, “what?” A noun in the accusative case refers to an object, person, substance, or phenomenon to which the action expressed by the verb is directed.
The main meaning of the instrumental case was the designation of the subject with which the action is performed. In the old days, it was called "weapon".
The prepositional case (about whom? About what?) Is always used only with prepositions. According to the frequency of use among indirect cases, it takes first place.