Russian Nouns

Overview

Nouns in Russian are just like nouns in English, the only different is that in Russian nouns change their forms and get different endings by using the 6 cases which help us know the role a noun is playing in a sentence. Again these cases are the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional. Moreover Russian nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter.

Russian Gender of Nouns

As mentioned before, Russian is gender sensitive, with its three genders (masculine, feminine, or neuter) a new learner should memorize the gender of a new word, along with the word itself, especially because there is no physical meaning to many words. For example (man: Мужчина) is masculine, but also (bread Хлеб) is masculine, (daughter Дочь) is feminine but also (newspaper газета) is feminine, so how would I have guessed that (bread Хлеб) is masculine and (newspaper газета) is feminine?

The good news is that in Russian you can guess almost all the time the gender of a noun by the way it’s spelled (especially its ending) which is an advantage to help you avoid struggling to remember the gender of a certain noun, instead try to memorize only the rule: the first time you see a word in a dictionary, focus on its ending, for example:

Note that these endings should be in the dictionary simple form, which is in the nominative case.

And like any other language, there are some rare exceptions to these rules, Masculine: (Daddy: Папа) or (Coffee: Кофе), and Neuter like: (first name: имя).

Russian Nouns & Cases

As mentioned before, Russian nouns change their forms and get different endings by using the 6 cases which help us know the role a noun is playing in the sentence. Again these cases are the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional.

For example a noun in the dative case will take a different ending than the one it takes in the nominative, usually the difference occur only in the final letter or two.

To understand nouns better you have to check the page of Russian Cases, which gives more explanations about the Russian cases and their function.

The table below shows the different endings a noun take in the six cases, in both singular and plural.

Russian Noun Case Endings

Russian Мasculine Noun Case Endings

Russian Feminine Noun Case Endings

Russian Neutral Noun Case Endings

Sometimes a Russian noun is connected to a preposition which is placed just before. it is necessary to learn how to use cases in Russian. You will learn more about cases in separate lessons.