Russian Numbers in the Instrumental Case

How do you play a chord with all five fingers? What if you arrive in a city with six rubles in your pocket, or want to say that someone is two or three years younger? We can express all of these contexts in Russian with numbers in the instrumental case.
If you've seen the other videos in my channel on declining numbers, you'll need just a handful of new endings to use numbers in the instrumental. And while even native speakers often avoid declining large compound numbers, these smaller numbers are still used in some very common contexts, so they're well worth learning.
For an introduction to using numbers in other cases and to learn how to say "from 2:00 to 5:00," start with this video on the genitive:
• Genitive of Numbers
To say "by 5:00" or "to help two students," review numbers in the dative case at • Numbers in the Dative ...
To say "in two cities," review numbers in the prepositional case at • Numbers in the Preposi...
To see why feeding 46 people is simpler than feeding two cats, review numbers in the accusative case at • Russian Numbers in the...
If you find my videos helpful as you explore this rich, complex language, please consider supporting the channel by buying me a coffee. Спасибо!
www.buymeacoffee.com/russiang...
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[@shukrimahmood]

Огромное Вам спасибо, многоуважаемый Доктор за such admirablely exhaustive, yet excellently compact, hence concise, explication of such an intricate piece of Russian grammar. It will take me much more time and effort to get closer, in quality, to what you have done virtually in no time. Congratulations!

[@Afdch]

me, after watching this: how can you possibly learn this and I'm a native speaker

[@CrazyDreamer1001]

It would be easier to learn if numbers (written with digits) were not allowed in news articles. When I read I try to pronounce the words in my head (even for words I don't understand the meaning of) but the numbers often break the flow.

[@russiangrammar]

Interesting observation. I do remember being in intermediate classes where, during reading aloud exercises, we'd all hope not to get the paragraph with the big numbers...

[@Afdch]

@@CrazyDreamer1001 I remember I was streaming something for my friends one day which had some numbers, and I something clicked and I pronounced numbers in English instead of awkward couple russian words among the English text, as I did before, and it was such a surprise how natural it was. And English doesn't even have cases to make it harder. Though I still struggle with stuff like 1200, where virtually any English speaker I hear would say "twelve hundred"; I really wanna say "one thousand two hundred".

[@lilyrose4191]

@@Afdch Hello Native Russian Speaker! I am a Native English Speaker ... and you read my mind! "How can I possibly learn this?!!" Fortunately I am only learning to improve my reading ability, not to speak Russian. Russian does sound so beautiful, almost every word is beautiful. But Russian Cases can be confusing: Prepositional and Accusative are okay ... but the rest are strange for an English speaker. By the way, it depends on the day for me. Sometimes I read 1200 as "twelve hundred" but other times I think or say, "One Thousand Two Hundred." I think you are brilliant as you know about both of these languages 🙂

[@Kristopher2022]

Me seeing this oh good casings suffering continues

[@videokita1235]

спасибо

[@Barbarossa97]

Sehr gutes Video

[@olehareide5443]

Thanks for the video! I’m currently watching The Living Daylights with Russian subtitles. When James Bond spots the sniper (the female cellist) he says «Sniper. Two floors up, center window». This is translated in the subtitles as «Снайпер. Двумя этажами выше, центральное окно». I did follow the reasoning behind the examples you show in your video, but in this case I cannot figure out why this is in the instrumental case. Why not just say «два этажа выше»? Is this just a common expression, or is there a logic here that escapes me? Thanks! 😊

[@russiangrammar]

Good observation! I've heard similar expressions but I can't recall teaching it specifically, or it having been taught to me, and I don't see it covered in most textbooks. I've often seen it in the context of comparisons, apparently as an alternative to на + accusative, for example, Вечером приехал папа. На два дня раньше, чем обещал. 'Dad arrived in the evening. Two days earlier than he'd promised.' / - Нет, семья моя выехала двумя днями раньше поездом... 'No, my family left two days earlier by train.' This Google ngram suggests both options are in use today: books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%D0%B4%D0%B2%D1%83%D0%BC%D1%8F+%D0%B4%D0%BD%D1%8F%D0%BC%D0%B8+%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8C%D1%88%D0%B5%2C%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%B0+%D0%B4%D0%BD%D1%8F+%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8C%D1%88%D0%B5&year_start=1840&year_end=2019&corpus=ru-2019&smoothing=3

[@polyanagula]

hello, native speaker here. I don't know the answer 100%, I am not a linguist. but my guess is that here is missing the word "is located", but it is meant from the context. the actual phrase would be "снайпер. он находится двумя этажами выше, центральное окно", but military people need shorter sentences and instrumental case and context makes it obvious what part is missing. phrase "снайпер. два этажа выше" gives a very confusing first impression, because it's like a simple listing of objects, without any connection between them (but there is a connection - the second word is location). you could also say "снайпер. на два этажа выше" - this would also be correct and people could say that, but "двумя этажами выше" sounds a bit better, especially for military context. I think in the military situation (e.g. when the radio might have bad connection or you can't speak loud) "на" in "на два этажа" might be not heard well and then the phrase would sound awkward as I described above, but the endings of "двумя этажами" is more difficult to miss, so it is a more safe option to be understood properly. in case you meant with your question, why the location can be described using instrumental case, this I don't know.

[@ghen3x]

At 1:00, you have a table of numbers ending in -ью́, with stressed endings all the way, but two stress marks on «оди́ннадцатью́» and «двена́дцатью́». Is that a "secondary stress", or just a copy/paste error and should the stress be on the first part of the number (оди́ннадцатью, двена́дцатью), like in other cases?

[@russiangrammar]

😬 It's a copy/paste error. Proper stress is indeed оди́ннадцатью, etc. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll try to get a fix up soon!

[@seanyboyblu]

what about the number 1 in this case? Ive seen it multiple ways in different places including in the phrase "one day" btw thanks for all the videos

[@russiangrammar]

Один declines like этот, but the endings are stressed: N один/одна́/одно́, G одного́/одно́й, etc; note the soft stem in instrumental masc. singular одни́м, and plural forms одни́, одни́х, одни́м, etc. The form одна́жды 'once, one day' is related to два́жды 'twice,' три́жды 'three times,' etc. :)

[@seanyboyblu]

@@russiangrammar i was listening to a song titled “одним днём». that means one day, right? can you help me understand why один is declined this way?

[@russiangrammar]

Hard to say without more context, but the instrumental can be used to express how something is done - for example, говорить громким голосом 'to speak in a loud voice' - and there are expressions like жить одним днём 'to live one day at a time' or 'to live for the moment,' perhaps that would fit?

[@onthesearch5]

Hallo, difficult , my teacher from Russia told me, that Russian often als have mistakes in Numbers, also in television programms!