Russian Cases - Nouns in the Prepositional

[@CaleLawOffice]

Excellent Russian grammar videos. Simple explanations. And, I really like the practice sections of the video.

[@ief2130]

The best video I've watched about this topic, I've watched 4 or 6 videos and they all have something missing ( especially the endings which are the most important ).. Thank you so much for your efforts!

[@russiangrammar]

Glad it was helpful! ))

[@samg]

not learning Russian but was looking for examples of prepositional noun cases. Your explanation was very clear

[@ananyasharma1825]

Thank you so much! You made it so simple to understand!!!!

[@emmamcniven144]

best video I have seen on nouns so far

[@11jupitercowboy8]

Man, you just made this seem so simple!

[@matthewdavies269]

11jupitercowboy8 he is excellent. He could explain anything

[@ananyasharma1825]

Absolutely agreed

[@russiangrammar]

Thanks Yamen, I'm glad you found it helpful!

[@jamesh625]

I have an odd question, which is probably due to me still being a beginner at Russian. So far, I've seen the nominative, genitive, accusative and prepositional cases, but it seems like the prepositional is the only one that alters the hardness/softness of the stem (e.g, город -> городе). Why is this? The other cases seem to "respect" the hard/soft qualities of nouns' stems. Even to me, this comes off as a weird questions since the answer could be "That's simply how Russian is", but I reckon the answer could be deeper; perhaps a suffix eventually glued itself onto the ends of nouns, causing a change in palatalisation. I'm unsure of how to find this information by myself. Hoping you can shed some light, professor.

[@russiangrammar]

The prepositional -е ending (as well as the feminine dative -е, which you'll soon encounter) developed from the vowel written as ѣ (now called ять) in older forms of Russian. We don't have sound recordings from those times, but it may have sounded like a long *е* or possibly ие. In any case, it merged with е, which follows a soft consonant - other examples include хлѣбъ > хлеб, гдѣ > где. So perhaps it makes sense that when it occurs in an ending, it also softens the final consonant of a root, even though you've correctly noticed that that's unusual. Odd questions are often the most interesting ones. :)

[@jamesh625]

@@russiangrammar I have another question: How do nouns like щи (-> щах) and ночь (-> ночах) work? Should I think that, because their stems' final consonants are inherently soft, we use -ах instead of -ях? I suppose the soft sign in ночь is superfluous and always removed for case endings...

[@russiangrammar]

For practical purposes, it's helpful to remember that spellings like щах and ночах fall under the 8-letter spelling rule: use а and у instead of я and ю after г к х ш щ ч ж ц. This is often an issue in verb endings: я говорю, but я молчу, я держу; они говорят, but они учатся, они держат. There's a slightly silly video on remembering the letters of the three spelling rules (7-letter, 5-letter, and 8-letter) here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j6GXh6J_hp5rpsk It's safest not to say that we use а, у after inherently soft letters, because that would suggest that we should use э after those letters as well - which we don't (честь, щенок, etc; I don't think the combinations щэ or чэ ever occur). Yes, the ь in ночь is removed before endings, and is phonetically superfluous, though it can be handy for distinguishing feminine nouns (ночь) from masculine (врач).

[@YamenKhaddour]

so great!!!...thank you

[@matthewdavies269]

I have a very good ear for sounds. Am I going mad, do и and ий sound exactly the same? (Example Тетради and кафетерий - I’m aware those are different cases)

[@russiangrammar]

Don't worry about your sanity :) - in normal and quick speech, й isn't heard as a distinct sound after и. It makes sense if you consider how the tongue position for и and the beginning of й is essentially the same; if the tongue isn't moving, you won't hear a separate sound. This is certainly true for the first й in a word like английский. Some argue that й might be devoiced at the end of a word (I knew someone once who tended to do this), but in general I wouldn't worry about distinguishing the pronunciation of endings of тетради and кафетерий. For a more extensive discussion you might check this thread: forum.wordreference.com/threads/how-to-pronounce-%D1%8B%D0%B9-and-%D0%B8%D0%B9.3413296/

[@naniWithCamelCase123]

a question (if possible to send you in the future in private i would love it): i stumbled a few days ago the sentence "i sleep on the floor", which translates to "ya splyu na polyu". whey isnt it "na palye" like a prepositional?

[@russiangrammar]

Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter, we can be in touch more easily that way. :) There's a group of masculine nouns that have this stressed -у́/-ю́ ending in the prepositional singular; some common ones include пол, снег, нос, лес, Крым, мост, год, рай.. so на полу 'on the floor,' в снегу 'in the snow,' на носу 'on the nose,' в лесу 'in the forest,' в Крыму 'in Crimea,' на мосту 'on the bridge,' в году 'in a year,' в раю 'in heaven,' etc. They have these endings only when you're expressing location - в лесу = in the forest, but Мы думали о лесе = We thought about the forest. This -у/ю ending was more common in earlier periods of the language, but has mostly disappeared - except for in a handful of words (kind of like the English -en plurals in 'children' and 'oxen').

[@naniWithCamelCase123]

thank you very much :)

[@ienjoysandwiches]

Can someone please help me understand the difference between accusative and prepositional

[@harry_page]

Accusative takes a direct object, meaning a person or thing that the verb is being done directly to. Я прочитал книгу. - I read a book. Book is in the accusative case with the -y ending there. Prepositional basically does a heap of other things that aren't direct objects. One example that might help contrast it with the accusative would be: Я прочитал об Эйнштейне. - I read about Einstein. Einstein's in the prepositional with the -e ending, and there's the preposition "oб" meaning "about". It wouldn't make sense to say "Я прочитал Эйнштейна." - "I read Einstein." Because we can't directly read him, instead we would read about him, he's not a direct object Hope that helps! (Edit: accidentally put "o" instead of "об", it's "об" before vowels just like with English "a/an")

[@ienjoysandwiches]

helps to capitalize the "e" in prepositional to remind of the ending

[@anamklavashvili7891]

thanks

[@sunving]

Thanks