Russian Cases - Taming the Genitive Plural (I)

You'll use the genitive plural all the time in Russian - to say things aren't there, in counting, for expressions like "a lot of" or "a few," in equivalents for "of" in English... Forming the genitive plural is easier than many think if we break it into just three basic groups. In this video we cover Group I: words ending in a vowel sound.
Note that this tutorial is for beginners, and there are some exceptional forms (дерево - деревьев, поле - полей, песня - песен, etc.) that are not covered here.
For over 200 videos like this one, and over 400 embedded comprehension checks, exercises, quizzes, and example sentences, visit my Russian Grammar Library Project at www.tips4russian.com.
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[@Cuasimodo2372]

I love it how you explain why things are the way they are, as you start seeing things in a logical point of view instead of as an arbitrary grammar rule, which helps to remember. I was looking for this, thank you!

[@dennism4812]

I completely agree with you. In my Russian class, the focus tends to be on singular only (which was difficult enough as it were) This is easy to remember because it's explained plain and simple. Thank you very much!

[@russiangrammar]

Dennis Meurders Пожалуйста! Your class will probably get to the plural later - it often makes sense to focus on one at a time. Remember that this video just covers group one, so don't forget to watch the 2nd & 3rd videos on genitive plural too. :)

[@dennism4812]

Russian grammar You're more than welcome! Of course I've watched the other videos as well. They are as well very helpful. I'm married to a girl from Belarus and when we go visit our relatives and friend over there, I want to be able to communicate with them. None of them (really) speaks English and that makes me 'greedy' so that I want to learn more at a faster pace than the people in my Russian class do. Without being stuck up of myself, I dare say that I'm ahead of them. My wife can vouch for this :-) In order to keep this up I will watch all your videos and learn everything you are saying!! Please keep them coming!

[@dallasduhe3850]

best Russian grammar videos ever! you make it so much more easy and logical. Im not sure why every Russian course teaches this way!

[@grahamshepherd9305]

Thanks, your vids are very helpful. I´ve been trying to learn russian for 18 months now, I have a Skype tutor and also attend school twice a year here in germany (plus lots of self motivated learning). Its not easy for me but progress is slowly showing. I experienced 2 phases where I wanted to stop but convinced myself to carry on. I am using your vids to recap on what others have taught me (tried to) and find they are re-assuring. I am 69yrs old though a friend of mine in england who has been learning russian for 4 yrs is now 82yrs old! Never too old to learn.

[@gilliancox1]

I am 70 yrs old and have been learning for 4 years on and off.

[@grahamshepherd9305]

@@gilliancox1 Keep it up, I'm having a change now with Arabic, I'm 73 now.

[@Juliasayzhi]

You make the genitive case soooo much easier - thank you SO much for these awesome videos!!

[@wwoonnjjuunn]

thank you for explain details! seems you have put a great amount of effort here!

[@user-wu7ye1pf9j]

Thank you so much for all the effort you have put into your channel. It is very good and helpful

[@mohammedtouati3855]

Thanks a lot, this is the best youtube channel of Russian grammar, everything is simple and easy and very organised thank you very much

[@PontusLundmark]

Dude I'm studying russian in moscow right now and your vids are such a big help, you're awesome. Keep up the great work!

[@Macvriendin]

Wow! Thanks!

[@lisaviktorya]

You are amazing. Thank you.

[@sammarrumardjukie2283]

thank you very much for you explanation, it's really helpful :)

[@faraisibanda8563]

Wow! Wow! Wow! Круто!! Never been impressed by a Russian lecture like this before. Wow, You Are The Best, Simply THE BEST!!! Thank you so much.

[@ayabakr6908]

Smartest way to explain ❤

[@rahulsisodia8743]

Just Amazing.

[@timssprachbox]

Your voice is wonderfully unobtrusive. Also, I like your approach to grammar. 👍🏻💯

[@jessemoldovan5499]

thank you so much!

[@henrikmustermann4715]

great work!

[@kamenikeren9380]

thank youuuuuuuu sooooo much

[@spartanscythian7148]

Very helpful! Had been trying to sort out by gender. Instead, simply drop the vowel at the end. 👍

[@andrescoronel6193]

СПАСИБА!

[@tovincentchia]

отлично

[@OltrePodcast_Official]

Amazing explanations you earned a sub

[@russiangrammar]

Спасибо!

[@OltrePodcast_Official]

@@russiangrammar не за что

[@TheTheRestifo]

Thank you for this great video. You have simplified this (potential nightmare) for me and my students! BTW, did you attend Middlebury College and Moscow's Pushkin Institute?

[@russiangrammar]

Yes, I was in Middlebury's MA program and at the Pushkin Institute... is that you, Frank? :)

[@TheTheRestifo]

Russian grammar Курт! Сколько лет, сколько зим! I immediately recognized your voice from another era! I'd really like to catch up with you!

[@catherinecollon9545]

Hooked on your videos.

[@MySaraga]

Goodness! I have been studying Croatian (also a Slavic language) for a couple years and even though they share a lot of words and some spelling, I have noticed that Russian has 100X more spelling rules (but a good few are shared) things like "otac" is "oca" in genitive singular, they have about the same soft and hard sound rules (accept they don't palatalize as much and Croatian has letters to show palatalization: ć, đ, lj, nj) but I do like Russian grammar better. Croatian advertised a "free" word order, but it lied right in my face, rite in front of my salad! It uses shortened forms of words called clitics and they have to be in a very special order. An example of this is the last sentence of my store's closing announcement that I translated myself then had my tooter proof it: "Voljeli bismo vam se zahvaliti na kupovini u vašoj Jo-Anni u Caryju i molim vas, sigurno vozite kući" meaning: we would like to thank you for shopping at you're Jo-Ann in Cary, and please have a safe drive home. Literally: "Loved we would ya'll (reflexive se) to thank on shopping at ya'll's Jo-Ann in Carry and I ask you, safely drive home." It MUST be in that order. I got used to it, but it took YEARS....

[@carlschuette4460]

bro free word order doesn't mean the language has no structure at all lol. its more talking about the position of adverbs and shit like that

[@jamesh625]

Is there an example of a word ending in -чя -че -чи -чё -чю or -щя -ще -щи -щё -щю in the nominative singular? What would the ending be in the genitive plural? The consonants are inherently soft, so a soft sign would be superfluous (just remove the final vowel letter), right? What about -чья -чье -чьи -чьё -чью or -щья -щье -щьи -щьё -щью? Спасибо!

[@russiangrammar]

Spellings like -чя and -щя would violate the 8-letter spelling rule, so they're not found. Russian words don't generally have -у/-ю [-u] or -и endings in the nominative, though there are loan words like кенгуру, меню, такси (these don't decline at all). A few words ending in -ище (туловище 'torso,' чуводище 'monster') have the expected gen. pl. туловищ, чудовищ - you're correct that no soft sign is needed. I can't think offhand of words in -чья etc.; words like статья 'article' and свинья 'pig' fall into group 2, but with a twist more easily followed in transcription: статья = [stat'ja], so we drop the final vowel [stat'j] and add a 'fill vowel' (e) between the t' and j [stat'ej] to get статей, свиней. So it's the same process as бабушка > бабушек, письмо > писем, and what looks like an added ending -ей is really just the end of the stem. Not everyone likes to bother with that level of analysis, so it's also OK just to remember -ья > -ей as an additional subgroup. Спасибо за интересные вопросы! ))

[@naniWithCamelCase123]

Hey, I've been having some struggle in deciding which is the right way to say "many cookies", ends with ья, how do i adress it?

[@russiangrammar]

Много печений. It's a tricky one: I've heard native speakers express doubts about the forms of this word (see www.ekburg.ru/news/18/59500-kak-pravilno-retsepty-pechenya--pechenev-ili-pecheniy/ for an example). There are lots of nice examples here: context.reverso.net/перевод/русский-английский/печений

[@Vivi-mf3fh]

This is an old video and It helps, but I have a question. Why put о in кухонь and not отчестов and месот? ст and тв are irregular? Is there a rule for letter groups? Thank you!

[@russiangrammar]

Great question! But let’s start with окно (gen. pl. окон). Centuries ago there was a vowel sound between the к and the н in all forms of this word - but with time, that vowel sometimes disappeared, and sometimes developed into an -о- (in some words, -е-). In the nominative form окно it disappeared; in the genitive plural it became -о-, so окон. Место never had this vowel between the с and the т, so there was no reason for an -о- to appear. Back to the kitchen: according to some etymological dictionaries, кухня is a relatively new word in Russian, used from the early 1700s (borrowed from Polish ‘kuchnia’). So it probably took the form кухонь by analogy to words like окон, which already had this alternation. I’m not sure we can explain why it took the pattern of окно/окон, rather than место/мест - perhaps because -хнь would be an unusual combination for Russian at the end of a word? That’s a guess. ))

[@russiangrammar]

But as for a rule: unfortunately there's no way to know predict this without knowing the history of the language, so best practice for beginners is to take note for each noun so that with time you'll get comfortable with the basic patterns. It may help to keep in mind that when a vowel appears, after к г х it's probably о; after a soft consonant or ж or ш, it's probably е: окон, but ложек, бабушек.

[@adorno_gang37]

So how did this type of genitive plural develop historically? To me, it's still counter-intuitive to form a plural form simply by removing rather than adding something to the word (but of course that's just bias from my own mother tongue). Is there some explanation why this happened precisely with the genitive plural?

[@russiangrammar]

Your intuition is not far off... Around 1000 years ago the genitive plural ending for many nouns was a vowel sound (written with the letter ъ!) which was later lost in certain positions, including at the end of a word. It also used to be the nominative singular ending of nouns like городъ, which is why nom. sing. masculine nouns now don’t end in a vowel sound, unlike fem. & neuter (книга, окно). In documents from before the spelling reforms of 1917-18 you can still see spellings like городъ, and gen. plural книгъ.

[@adorno_gang37]

@@russiangrammar that's interesting! So at the time of the spelling reform, did they abolish the ъ because it already wasn't being pronounced as a vowel anymore in practice?

[@russiangrammar]

Yes, ъ at the end of a word had become silent probably by around the 13th century. This was part of a larger phenomenon often called the "fall of the jers" (reduced vowels); linguist Asya Pereltsvaig has a summary in this blog post (you might enjoy the puzzle she starts with): www.languagesoftheworld.info/historical-linguistics/story-jers.html . There's a summary in Russian here: moluch.ru/archive/95/21429/

[@dg7438]

I wish you explained in what context you'd use the cases.. not just the endings

[@russiangrammar]

The genitive case is used in a variety of contexts - check the genitive case playlist for more details, especially the videos on absence and non-existence, quantity, possession & attribution, and nouns after два/три/четыре and after пять - двадцать. :) kzbin.info/aero/PLrIkLgUgjNHdqTEcxWfh7zFIjLLcIHlLy

[@dg7438]

@@russiangrammar great, thanks much for your high quality material

[@cubanmapping4406]

4:52 I thought this video was supposed to be kid-friendly.

[@abaz6955]

it means nation

[@nikolekyt3812]

What about дядя? Why we have далей instead of дядь?

[@russiangrammar]

It's not unusual for a language to have variant forms and exceptions; sometimes it's a matter of how the language has developed over time, sometimes it's hard to pin down a reason for a given form to be considered standard. The form дядь can be heard sometimes - there's more on that and other genitive plural exceptions in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bHeYqoiYbL2Br80

[@nikolekyt3812]

@@russiangrammar thanks!

[@Darcy-Roo]

Omfg! Is this university level Russian!?

[@russiangrammar]

Yes! This topic often comes in the middle of the second semester.

[@jeffreyd508]

Great video! To all whippersnappers who stumbled upon this video, and just started learning Russian, I say "pull the ripcord" and stop now! Unless you need Russian, this is a soul crushing language and shouldn't be studied as a hobby in my opinion. Go learn French or Spanish. It will take only 30% the time it takes to learn Russian and you will get more mileage out of it. . If I could turn back time, I would NEVER embark on this journey. Im in too deep now to turn back or I will have wasted 100's of hours needlessly. I live in Ukraine and met expats who lived here 6-10 years and can barely form a sentence and they speak many languages fluently. One speaks six! When I bring up Russian to long time expats, its always met with "sigh", laughter, or something like "don't even think about it bro" . (takes vodka shot)

[@russiangrammar]

Jeffrey, I undestand the need to vent (I learned motion verbs as a non-native speaker too, I've been there!), but it *is possible* to be successful with Russian. It takes time & practice & work & patience, and is a long term process - that's OK. Don't be discouraged by expats, some of whom may not have had the need or motivation to follow through. Are you taking a course? Private lessons? What's your approach been so far?

[@jeffreyd508]

I taught myself Spanish to near fluency while living in L. America for four years. Im trying to learn like a child, listen and repeat. A child never studied, yet speaks perfectly at five. Grammar is about 25% of my studies, with the rest being Glossika, Babbel, vocab, videos with subtitles. . Tough speaking on the streets of the FSU as patience is thin here, and empathy at an all time low. No one slows down and they talk to me like a local, leaving me staring at them like a deer in headlights. When asking them to repeat, they get frustrated, or they try to talk to me in English.....and their 'English' in the FSU is whole other topic, if you can even call it English.

[@russiangrammar]

Are you taking a course? I want to urge you *in the strongest possible terms* to sign up for a course with an experienced teacher; if that's not possible, get Nicholas Brown's 'New Penguin Russian Course' and find a tutor (try italki.com) to help you work through it and give you focused practice. Children acquire language in a very different context, and you are not a child. And Spanish isn't Russian, as I gather you've noticed. ;) IMHO studying Russian on your own (with Babbel/Glossika/KZbin videos etc) is like heading to the mountains with stack of maps, none of which have trail markings. Working through a book (or maybe the RT online course) with an experienced teacher is like hiring an experienced guide - you won't reach the summit overnight, but you'll get there more efficiently, with less frustration, and enjoy the journey more. :)

[@jeffreyd508]

Spanish is NOT Russian. Used to think it was hard, but now I know it's possible to become conversational in Spanish or English in a few months. I will get 1 on 1 tuturing as an addition when I get back to the Captial. Thanks for the advice, love your vids!

[@abaz6955]

For your info, French is a hard language to learn, it has a difficult grammar, a difficult conjugation and a spoken language which doesn't sound like the written language. Spanish is a more logical language than French.