Full transcript of genitive-case. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNGMCX9t2kg
and welcome to Russian readers and in today’s video we’re going to start talking about the genitive case and let me remind you guys that to truly know a case you need to know its meaning or meanings and its form right and this is what we always focus on in our videos and I have bad news and good news for you about the change of case and let’s start with the bad news uh and the bad news is that the genjive case in Russian in my humble opinion is the most difficult case but at the same time it’s the most common case so you’ll see it all the time it’s very very common um so yeah that’s the bad news and now to the good news some of you may remember that I told you that unlike Russian English does not really have grammar cases and for the most part it is true but technically English does have one case that you can apply to nouns and that case is called the possessive case and as it follows from the name possessive case expresses possession in other words if someone has something and you want to express that you wanna you know say that it’s his or hers or theirs right you can actually apply that possessive case to a noun and then English is expressed it is expressed through the apostrophe s ending for example if you have a friend and your friend has a car you would say this is my friend’s car right so you technically change the ending of the noun Friend by applying that apostrophe s to it right and that makes it a possessive case so the good news use is that by and large you know fundamentally this is what the change of case is in Russian and like I said you know change of case has a lot of uses a lot of meanings not all of them are very easy to explain but again in this video we’re only going to talk about the most fundamental the most General meaning of the change of case in Russian and that meaning is possession but here’s the tricky part uh you know in Russian we don’t really have apostrophes right so you can’t really literally add an apostrophe s or any other ending in Russian so the only way to express the genitive case in Russian is to literally say instead of saying my friend’s car you would have to say car of my friend or for example instead of saying this is my sister’s house you would literally have to say this is the house of my sister which you could technically do in English as well it’s not incorrect it’s just a little less common but here’s the beauty of the change of case in Russian by applying the change of case to a noun you don’t even have to use a preposition so again in English to apply the possessive case or the change of case if you will you have two options right you can either apply that apostrophe s for example friends car right or you can uh use the preposition of uh and say a car of the friend right in Russian you would do neither of those uh in Russian you would simply put the noun friend in the change of case so you would simply apply the genitive ending to the noun friend so you would still kind of say car of friend except of friend in Russian as one word which is friend in the ghf case I know this is a little confusing so let me actually show you some examples and this actually takes us to the form of the change of case in Russian so here’s the form again only for singular nouns so masculine and newer nouns take the ending ah or ya in the jaint of case as one of my students put it by putting masculine and neuter nouns in the change of case you kind of make them feminine which is of course not really true you know nouns can’t change their gender but if it’s easier for you to think that way you definitely can so let’s look at some examples drug in the genitive case would become druga which literally means of a friend or of the friend or you could translate it as friends apostrophe s right uh brought in the ghf case would become brata and again it would mean literally of the brother or brothers something right um some inanimate examples for example Dom would become DOMA which literally means of the house uh some neuter examples again neuter and masculine uh take the same endings in James of case so for instance malakua milk would become Malacca which means of milk or of the milk and when would you put a ya again it’s a purely phonetic change right eye and yeah they’re pretty much considered the same ending but for instance if your noun ends in the soft sign or soft consonant all right you would want to keep that soft by applying the ya ending because you know ya is a softening vowel unlike ah for example if you have the word hotel right in the jinji if it would become atelia because you want to keep that L soft and atelia would literally mean of the hotel uh or words ending in yeah right in that case you would also apply ya for example chai tea in the gentive case would become Chaya of the T so what happens to feminine nouns in the genitive well feminine noun ending in the genitive case is and I know that to you it may look like you’re pretty much putting your feminine nouns in the plural when you apply the change of case ending and a lot of times yeah it will be the same the exact same form it will sound the same it will look the same but you have to remember that um you know if you’re applying the change of case ending to feminine nouns you’re not putting them on the plural right you’re putting them in the jaint of case but again if it makes it easier for you to think of it that way to to think of the plural ending as the genitive feminine ending singular than uh again be my guest think of it that way so let’s look at some examples um sister in the genitive case would become CIS three of the sister or sisters something uh mama mom would become Mommy uh so of Mom of one’s mom or mom’s something right uh some inanimate examples mashrina uh car in the jaintev would be machine Lee which would mean of the car and uh when would you apply the E again it’s a purely phonetic ending uh if you have a soft consonant on the end of your noun uh or a soft sign right you would apply the E because again e is a softening vowel unlike oui which is not not a softing vowel for example the word righteous ends in the yeah which makes the T the second T soft so you want to keep it soft in the genitive or in the plural right that’s why you apply the E so T which would mean off one’s and or ants something right or another example is Kravitz a bed right so in a change of case it would be kravati which would mean of the bed and just like for plural endings you would also apply e after those seven consonants right remember I taught you that rule in our video on the number if case about the plural endings right so that same rule applies to genitive feminine endings because essentially it’s the same ending as the plural ending for example the noun kiniga in the ginger case would become right because is one of those seven consonants would mean of the book and as you can imagine the change of case is very common with proper names right because it expresses possession or belonging so if you’re using a name a person’s name in Russian you would actually also put it in a change of case so you would apply that same ending so let’s look at some common masculine names for example Michael right in the genesive case would be maikla right because obviously it’s masculine so you apply ah right Mica would mean of Michael or Michael’s something right another common American name is drone right and again in the gingive case it would become Jonna which again would mean of John or John’s now let’s look at a couple of common Russian names Alexander uh well that’s kind of an International International name but anyway it’s very a very common name in in Russian so Alexander in a change of case would become Alexandra right of Alexander or Alexander’s uh and another example is sergier right in the jamesf case would become sergie which would mean of Sergey or sergeys something and let’s look at some common uh female names for example Anna would become Ani energetic right of Anna or Anna’s of Maria or Maria’s Natasha would become natashi of Natasha or Natasha’s and for instance Alisa would become Alicia of Alisa or alisas please keep in mind though that if you’re dealing with some names that are not very common in Russia and those names don’t have any clear gender endings then you would not apply any ending to them at all even if you’re technically putting them in the change of case you would just not change the ending for example let’s take the name Matthew right in Russian Matthew is Matthew but it does not have a clear masculine ending right because the masculine ending generally in Russian is a consonant right so you would not technically apply any ending to to this name right even if you’re using it in a change of case for example if you want to say this is Matthew’s car you would literally just say met you so don’t try to apply any ending to to a name that does not have a clear gender ending another example is Joshua for example right this is Joshua’s car in Russian would be ETA mashrina Joshua that being said if you shorten those names to Matt or Josh then they would end in the consonant and in that case you could apply the the actual change of case ending right for example this is Matt’s car would be ETA machina mayata or this is Josh’s car right you would say eta machine the same goes for some common female names for example Jennifer or or Megan right those names that don’t necessarily end in an ah so they don’t in other words they don’t end in the typical feminine ending uh in that case again you just don’t touch the ending right you just keep them the same for example this is Jennifer’s car you will literally just say yeah Jennifer or this is Megan’s car ETA machine the important thing to remember here is that the owner or or the possessor of the object comes after the object not before the object as it is oftentimes the case in English for example if you’re trying to say this is Michael’s car in Russian you would not say eta Michaela right you would say because again Michaela means of Michael so literally you’re kind of saying this is the car of Michael except again you don’t say off literally because Michaela already means of Michael so you’re just saying uh this is Michael’s car again ETA machine or if you’re trying to say this is my sister’s house right don’t try to say right you would literally say which means this is a house of the sister or of one’s sister so let’s have some practice I will tell you a few phrases in English and you will need to translate them into Russian and use the change of case feel free to pause the video after each question if you need a few more seconds to think but for each question I will be telling you the answer in just a few seconds also for right now I will be avoiding the possessive pronouns in my examples I know in English it’s very common to say this is my brother’s car for example right you wouldn’t really say this is the brother’s car or this is brother’s car right but in Russian it’s not uncommon to actually say it like that and for the Simplicity of these examples again I will be avoiding those possessive pronouns because technically you would have to put them in a change of case as well and we haven’t really learned how to do that yet so yeah no possessive pronounced for now first example how would you say brother’s car so the word for car is mashrina the word the word for brother is brat right so how would you say brother’s car or literally car of brother brothers car in Russian would be mashrina brata right literally car of brother right prata literally means of brother how would you say Anna’s house right so the word for house is Dom the word for Anna is Anna so how would you say Anna’s house Anna’s house would be right Dom house only of Anna right so the ginger form of Anna is how would you say sister’s dog right so dog is Sabaka sister is sistra so how would you say sister’s dog sister’s dog would of course be Sabaka sisters which literally means dog of sister right so history literally means of sister how would you say friend’s phone right so the word for phone is telephone the word for friend is drug so how would you say friends phone and that of course would be telephone druga right phone of friend how would you say Alexander’s book right so the word for book is and uh Alexander the male male name is Alexander so how do you say Alexander’s book Alexander’s book would be keniga Alexandra right Alexander is a masculine noun you apply ah to it the book Alexandra of Alexander how would you say Megan’s cat right so the word for cap is koshka well female cat and uh the name Megan in Russian is the same miyagan right so how do you say Megan’s cat Megan’s cat would be koshka miyagan right the literally cat of Megan and again the the name Megan does not have a clear feminine ending so you do not change it you don’t apply any ending even though technically it’s in the genief case in this example but there is no change and just a couple of examples with inanimate nouns right for example if you’re trying to say roof of the house right so the word for roof in Russian is krisha and the word for house of course is Dom so how would you say roof of the house and of course you follow the rules right so the roof is Grisha and then of the house so you put the word house in the genjive case it is masculine so it becomes Doma right the roof of the house literally and one more example uh how would you say door of the car right so the word for door in Russian is vir and the word for car is of course mashrina so how would you say door of the car and again you follow the rule so door does not change and it’srina feminine becomes machinely in the ghf case so literally door of car or of the car becomes Veer machine and in this video I told you that the most General the most fundamental meaning of the JFK is possession but one other hint I can give you is always think of the jtf case as something that has to do with off right and of course the preposition of does Express possession so it kind of makes sense but you will see with other uses of genitive that most of the time it has something to do with off so whenever in English you would be saying something that involves of or implies of right A lot of times you would actually use genitive in Russian uh for example with measures right or or other uses all right guys I hope this video was helpful if so be sure to hit the like button remember you can also ask us any questions in the comment section below uh thank you all very much for watching uh remember to subscribe to our Channel and of course subscribe to our app Russian readers where you’ll find a lot of helpful stories including those that will help you practice grammar and cases in the Russian language and well I will see you in our next video until then