Роди'тельний Паде'ж

• Read this post first, it will help
• Падеж means case
• If you want to read about its equivalent - the genitive case - in English, here you go.

Ok, so here is, as promised, our first case. We only just learned how to read/write, how to count, and the pronouns, haven't even learned a verb... so this may seem somewhat premature? Well, let me assure you, it's not. And here's why:

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These cases are absolutely integral to the language - example: so far all the words we've learned have been singular, so we can say face (лицо), year (год), person(человек), but not faces, years, people. That's where this first case comes in - it is used, for one thing, to make plurals. Let me try to explain. There are different ways to think about this. In Russian, when you say 4 years, четыре года, the best way of translating it is actually 'four of years'. Problem is, in Russian there's no such word as 'of'... instead of changing any words before the noun, we change the ending, which both makes life simpler(than other languages, maybe not English), but can also be confusing for someone who isn't used to the concept - that's why I'd made a post earlier to at least confront you with the idea.

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The whole idea of the Родительний Падеж is that is expresses a certain relationship between words, in this case(yeah, yeah) when something is 'of' something... if that makes any sense. Hopefully it will when I explain it further.

The root "род", as I've mentioned elsewhere, has to do with, well the root, or the origin of something. It has to do with nature/belonging. To demonstrate, some other words that have the same root:

Русский	English
Родители	Parents
Родиться	To be born
Природа	Nature
Родина	Motherland
Народ	People(ie people of Russia)

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But enough of this... let's have a look at when to use it:

• To form plurals. How many children? 4 of children (that's just how it is in Russian, might be counter intuitive to someone English speaking but deal with it :p)
• With a number of prepositions, most importantly 'у', which will be the next thing I'll go into.
• With quantities... How much wine? A bottle of wine. How much vodka? Not a lot of vodka.
• Possession - Whose table is that? It's Ivan's table... ie the table of Ivan, it belongs to him.
• When there is nothing of something... Чая нет (Чай means tea). I'll also cover this, don't worry if this seems overwhelming, just writing the whole overview of the case here, so that you can find everything in one place later on.

I will make individual posts about these uses. But now let's see how to form the родительний. This is where it comes in handy to know which gender a nouns has:

M|N|F|P :---:|:---:|:---: -a|-a|-ы|-ей(f) -я|-я|-и|-ов(m)

Basically, we're going to mess with the last letter of the word to make it родительний.

So, this is the most important information. The point is, when a word is in the род, it has to end on those vowels only... if that makes any sense. But sometimes in it's normal form, a word already has an ending. Let's just take some words from our list as examples.

As we know from our lesson on gender, M and F have 3 possible types of endings and N has 2.

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1. M type 1 - ending on a consonant

Человек - man(as in human), our first vocabulary word

As we know, it has to end either with а or я... when there's nothing, you just add an -а

Человека

Ok, so why а, not я? As you can tell, the two are very similar sounds... the я is just an а with a bit of a "y" sound at the beginning:

A - YA

So, think of it like this: You're adding an 'а' to the end of the word... and the letters й and ь signify the an 'y' sound. Although ь has no sound of its own, it essentially adds the slightest little (y) sound.

And, well й+a=я... ь+a=я

As I type this I realize it probably sounds complicated, but just read it slowly, it's a lot to take in.

Don't give up, just ask))

2. So, our next masculine example is:

Писатель - writer

We're adding an 'а' sound, right? Писатель + а = ??

Писателя!

I hope you understand why... The word already has a tiny little (y) sound at the end of it, so when we add an А, we get Я.

3. Masculine with -й ending - Случай

As you can probably tell, it will be similar to what just happened above. We add an 'a' sound to the 'й', and get 'я'

Случая

Ta-daa! This seems complicated, right? Just remember, for Masculine nouns, just add an A sound! After a while it becomes intuitive and really doesn't seem so difficult.

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Neutral - it's a similar idea as with the masculine. Neutral nouns generally end in -о or -е. As examples, I'll be using Место - place, seat... and Море - sea

Again, we're adding and "А" sound, so we're adding either а or я... so we're listening for the (y) sound again!

This works better orally, but in Russian the е is pronounced 'ye' - listen to it here if you don't believe me :p... so it has a bit of a (y) sound at the beginning. And the 'о' is just an o, no 'y' involved.

So...

1. Место

No (y) in the last letter, o, so:

места

2. Море

Has a (y)... the е at the end is pronounced 'ye'

So... море becomes моря... we take off the last 'sound' and replace it with an 'a' sound. I hope this makes sense.

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Lastly, Feminine

In this case, we're adding an -ы sound. Go here to hear what that sounds like.

In this case, ь+ы = и

And F nouns can end with а, я, or ь. As you can hopefully already see, я and ь have an (y) sound(well, ь is a (y) sound)... so they will be replace by И, whereas a will just be replaced by an ы.

Once you've heard it often enough it will make sense.

1. Сестра - sister

So, we're 'messing with' the last letter, right? An a is just pronounced 'a' right, no (y) so...

Сестра - Сестры

2. Жизнь - Life

The ь signifies an (y) sound... soo we add И, right?

Жизни

3. Земля - Earth, land, ground

Я (ya) has a (y) sound in it, sooo

Земли

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So, what can we do now? We can make plurals! (Actually, keep them under 5 though :/ ) Think of it like this, in English you add an s, in Russian you add an 'aaa' or an 'ыыы', it's that "simple" haha. But this has much, much, more uses! At the beginning this doesn't have a lot of practical uses but it's everywhere, we'll build on this!

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Ok, so that post leaves me with a lot of 'splainin to do(will go through all the uses of this cases, so you can practice!). My advice: Go through the vocabulary words and try forming the Родительний Падеж of all of them... post your results and we'll correct you, don't be shy!

To motivate you, let me just clarify that I'm posting this on the second day and if you understand this you're already very, very well on your way - it's a large chunk of the language I would say. Don't despair - it will all pay off in the end. We'll probably spend a week or two just on this case, practice practice practice.

This is a lot to take in if you've just learned the alphabet - but even if you don't get it, it's good to have seen it now. I know I'm moving quickly, but I thought I'd add something for those of you who already knew the alphabet and all of that. And really, it just looks complicated, it isn't really. Just remember:

• M and N - Add an 'A' sound
• F - add an 'Ы' sound

There will be more on this case coming up of course! The plural(ie the colour of the cars/the colour of the car)... and examples of other uses of this case.