What is "to decline"?

When you decline a word you modify it. After that, the word has a new function in a sentence.

In English we don't decline nouns:

• Subject: The man is big.
• Object: I saw the man.

However, pronouns are declined:

• Subject: he is big.
• Object: I saw him yesterday.

This modification is called "case". So, you could say that "him" is a case of the pronoun "he".

Some opposites (antonyms) in Russian

In Russian you can find adjectives like these:

• Good (хоро́ший) - bad (плохо́й)
• good-looking (краси́вый) - ugly (уро́дливый)

But there is an easier way to create the opposite of an adjective: simply adding "не" to the adjective:

• хоро́ший (good) - нехоро́ший (not good = bad)
• краси́вый (good-looking) - некраси́вый (not good-looking = ugly)

Pay also attention to the transformation of the following particles when adding "ни":

• когда́ (when) - никогда́ (never)
• где (where) - нигд́е (nowhere)
• кто (who) - никто́ (nobody)

Examples of cases seen in this lesson

In Russian we decline pronouns, nouns and adjectives. In other words, pronouns, nouns and adjectives can have "cases".

Now you will see examples of cases from this lesson's dialogues. They are cases of the pronouns you already know (я, ты, он,...). In this lesson you have seen, for example, меня́ / мне (cases of "я") or тебя́ / тебе́ (cases of "ты").

Example taken from dialogue 1:

• You saw me yesterday?
• Ты ви́дела меня́ вчера́?

"Me" is the accusative case of "I". In English we can't say "You saw I yesterday?", we have to transform "I" into "me".

"Меня́" is the accusative case of "я". In Russian we can't say "Ты ви́дела Я вчера́?", we have to transform "я" into "меня́".

Example taken from dialogue 3:

• I saw you yesterday.
• Я ви́дел тебя́ вчера́.

In this example "you" doesn't change. We can say "You have money" and "Mary saw you".

Pay attention that this doesn't happen to "I", because we say "I have money" and "Mary saw me" (instead of "Mary saw I").

In Russian "тебя́" is the accusative case of "ты". We can't say "Я ви́дела ты": we have to transform "ты" into "тебя́".

The Russian cases

When we decline a word, we classify it in "cases". The grammatical case expresses the function of a word (subject, direct or indirect object...). In Russian there are 6 cases (so far you only know the nominative):

1. Nominative (subject)
2. Genitive (possession)
3. Accusative (direct object)
4. Dative (indirect object)
5. Instrumental ("with someone" / "with something")
6. Prepositional (when there is a preposition before the noun)

* Remember that we have a course to help you with cases. Here you can go to lesson 1