Full transcript of nominative-case. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JpEa9vFZE8
welcome to Russian readers and today we’re starting our new series on Russian cases and as you may remember from my introductory video or maybe you know it by yourselves Russian has six grammar cases which sounds pretty intimidating especially to those of you whose first language is English or Spanish or or other languages that essentially have no grammar cases but don’t worry guys uh we will make a lot of videos in which we will break down uh all the cases on the case by case basis pun intended and today we’re starting with the easiest case there is which is the nominative case and while I have good news for you the nominative case is not really much of a case I mean there is nothing much to learn about it because it’s the so-called as this case or the dictionary case right so this is the case you would find most nouns or all Russian nouns Ian when you just learn them you know as is maybe look them up in a dictionary or you just you know make flash cards so this is the case that you put your noun in in the initial form or the dictionary form or the as is form so when would you use the nominative case well first of all you use it when you introduce something right you simply state uh the existence of something right for example you say this is a car right in Russian you would say right so the word mashrina is the as is form uh which is a nominative case right or for example you’re introducing a person right so my brat would be uh in the nominative case you also put your nouns in the nominative case when uh it’s the subject in the sentence right for example you say my car is white right so my car in this case is the subject right so again you would say and blah being the adjective by the way is also in the non-native case or again when a person is the subject of the sentence for example right my brother Works in Toronto uh muy brat would be in the nominative case and then finally you use the nominative case when there is something right something is out there right um or when you have something right and that’s a little tricky right because in English you say you know I have a car and that sounds like you know cars you direct object right but in Russian we use the phrase which literally means on me there is and then after there is you always use the nominative case yeah the reason Russian is yeast there is or there are right so um I have a car or literally on me or in my possession there is a car and again mashrina would be in the nominative case or if you say you know Colorado is there are mountains in Colorado right so again uh gory would be a denominative case and while since there isn’t much to learn about the nominative case per se right I thought maybe I would teach you a little more about the plural form right because obviously the normative case has the plural form which again is the as is form and then occasionally you put nouns in the plural form uh the Russian plural is pretty straightforward but there are some nuances so let’s let’s look at them and well as you probably know most Russian nouns in the plural take oui or E I don’t have the exact statistics but I would say probably 90 plus percent of Russian nouns do that that for the plural maybe more right so you put either an UI or an e on the end of a noun when you put it in the plural and if your noun ends in a consonant you simply add U or e but if it ends in a vowel then uh most often you just replace that vowel with an UI or e for example the word telephone ends in the consonant so on the plural you simply add we tili for me is the plural phones and the word for example mashrina car right it ends in a vowel so you replace that vowel with an E so mashrina in the plural becomes Machinery so when is it an E when is it an UI the rule is a little tedious to memorize but once you memorize it’s pretty straightforward right so you always put an UE unless the last consonant in your noun is one of the following consonants so all right so if you have one of those as the last consonant of your noun then the you must apply the e in the plural in all the other cases you apply the UI for example in the word mashrina the last consonant is an N right so it’s not one of those seven consonants that would take an e that’s why for mashrina the pluralism same with for example guys here three and then for example caniga right kaniga the last consonant is a GU so it is one of the seven consonants so you apply the e uh another example is yablaca uh the last consonant is right legery and uh vaishi things for example right they all take the E although usually I tell my students that really and truly it doesn’t matter whether you put an U or an e especially if you’re a lower level student because they’re kind of similar sounds right uh and E they sound pretty similar so chances are even if you apply the wrong plural especially in your speech when you speak Russians most likely just think that it’s your accent you know it’s not like you applied the wrong ending maybe you just mispronounced it so I wouldn’t worry too much about it just put an U or an e and most of the time you will sound just fine however there are a bunch of nouns in Russian that take ah as the plural and it’s so common that I can’t even call it an exception you know because there are actually a lot of nouns that take the ah again I don’t have the statistics but uh you know I would say probably at least five or ten percent of Russian nouns maybe more take the ah and there are a lot of common words that do that uh ah or sometimes yeah again it depends on on the pronunciation or the last consonant but most of the time it’s an OP so let’s look at some examples so dorm pretty common word right is the plural and most of the time you actually stress that ah or stress that yeah right glass um I Gaza eyes uh evenings boys train boys trains uh oblaka a clouds uchitel teacher teachers doctor doctor doctors and many more and beware that some Russian nouns that would be singular in English or or perhaps you know many other languages they’re actually plural and Russian so just something you have to memorize uh doesn’t really make much much sense sometimes so let me give you a couple of examples uh the most common examples that come to mind are dngi so ding is money in English it’s singular but in Russian it’s plural right so you use it as a plural noun and it doesn’t really have a singular form d and d and then another common example is a watch like a wrist watch or a clock it’s the same word kind of makes sense because GC literally hours you know just is an hour but still you know if you’re talking about a single clock or a single watch that you wear it’s a little weird that it’s plural but in Russian it is plural so you have to agree it with you know plural adjectives plural verb forms Etc and of course there are a lot of nouns in Russian that have irregular plurals that you just have to memorize them let me give you a few common examples that I recommend that you memorize because they’re very common so drug a friend druzia friends okay brat brother brazia brothers sistra sister sustres so you add the dots you know yeah changes to your Source three for sisters uh sin that’s a really weird one a sonavia Sons okay and then stool pretty common word write a chair would be stullia uh in the plural chairs be careful though because a very similar word stole which means desk or table has a regular plural stali so stole stali but stoolia and another another common example is a tree plural would be trees and as you can see oftentimes the stress shifts as well okay guys this is pretty much everything I wanted to share in this video uh regarding the nominative case of course there’s a little more to it for example you know noun adjective agreement in different genders in plural but we can make another video about it in this video I just wanted to to tell you about the nominative case what it is about and of course a few things about the plural because that is part of the nominative as well I hope you like this video uh if you have any questions please be sure to post them in the comment section be sure to like this video and share it with your friends and don’t forget to subscribe to our Channel Channel And subscribe to our app we have a lot of helpful stories including grammar guides that can help you learn more about cases in a natural way by reading stories with pictures and you know highlighted narration and Interlinear translation so we’ll be happy to see you in our app thank you for watching and we’ll see you in our next video