Nouns: Case

First things first: If you don't already speak an inflected language (such as Latin or German), go to the Russian Language Mentor and read Fundamentals of Case Grammar. This will give you a better understanding of what's going on when Russian inflects for case.

Russian has six cases, answering six general questions:

Case Name	English name	Function	Questions
Nominative	Subject	actor or agent, doer	Who? What?
Genitive	Possessive	possessor	Of whom, whose? Of what?
Accusative	Objective	object, one/thing done to	Whom? What?
Dative	Objective	indirect object, recipient	To whom? To what?
Instrumental	Objective	accompaniment, thing used	With/by whom? With/by what?
Prepositional	Objective	location, thing talked about	About whom? About what? Where?

Notice that in English, 'whom' declines but 'what' doesn't, and that 'whom' has only two declined forms. That's pretty much the case across the board. English nouns only change to show possession. Pronouns also change when used as objects - that is, some of them do.

Now, on to the case forms.

The dictionary form of the noun, the one you will learn in vocabulary lists and such, is the nominative case. (In English, this is often called "the subject(ive) case".) All subjects and all predicate nominatives are in nominative case. It is the basic form, the one all other forms change from.

The patterns of a noun's changing are called its declension. Generally, people say the endings are added to the noun; in practice, this is true for masculine nouns, but feminine and neuter nouns have their endings changed.

As an example, the full set for masculine стол table and feminine книга book:
стол стола стола столу столом столе столы столов столы столам столами столах
книга книги книгу книге книгой книге книги книг книги книгам книгами книгах
Note how the -a from книга disappears and is replaced by the other endings. (Don't fear! We will go into all the cases and their endings.)

Posts by Case:
Prepositional:

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Resources  

Here is a web application that will provide all the forms of a noun you provide.

These language learning sites will have units on noun cases: Master Russian, Russian Nouns and Cases.

From Learning Russian,Nouns and Cases.

From Russian Lessons, Summary of the Cases with more details at links provided.

Nouns: Gender

In brief, in Russian, as with many other European languages, each noun is assigned a gender. Russian has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter (neutral).

In the cases of words like “father” these relate to physical gender. In the case of other objects like “pen”, “cup”, “house”, there is no physical meaning attached to the gender. However you will still need to know the gender because it affects how words are formed, what endings adjectives use with them, what endings they themselves take in various cases, and which verb forms they govern.

Luckily, unlike many languages, in Russian it is almost always possible to tell what the gender of a noun by its spelling. When you use a noun as the subject of a sentence, it will be in its dictionary form (nominative case). In this form you can easily work out its gender. If the noun is in another part of the sentence the ending is changed to suit the case.

From the dictionary form of a noun, here is how you can tell what the gender is:
Look at the last letter of the word:

• If it is a hard consonant, or “й”, the word is masculine. 
• If it is “а” or “я” it is feminine unless denoting a male person, e.g. папа daddy, дядя uncle, дедушка grandfather, мужчина man
• Note: a number of nouns ending in “a” and referring to people are “common gender”, taking masculine or feminine adjectives and verbs as required, e.g. левша left-handed person, сирота orphan
• If it is “о” or “е” it is neuter except for кофе coffee, and borrowed words naming animals, e.g. шимпанзе, chimpanzee
• If it is a soft sign “ь” then it could be either masculine or feminine. This is the biggest source of confusion, but there are still some guidelines. 
• Natural gender: Male living things are masculine, e.g. зять son-in-law, кобель male dog, король king, парень young man, lad
• All month names are masculine, e.g. январь January февраль February
• All birds and insects are masculine except выпь bittern, неясить tawny owl, and моль moth
• Suffixes that are masculine: -тель ‘deverbal agent’, i.e., one who or that which does (-er) учитель teacher, двигатель engine (one which moves) and -арь ‘one who is or does’ вратарь goalkeeper, пекарь baker
• Suffixes that are feminine: -ель (not –тель) from verbs гибель death, ruin метель snow storm (this is from a verb root мет) and  -ость abstract nouns (like English –ness) милость kindness, внимательность carefulness
• See slides (linked below) for more
• If it is “у” it is neuter unless naming an animal, when it is masculine, e.g. какаду cockatoo.

 Some examples:

• Masculine : паспорт passport, документ document, брат brother, хлеб bread. 
• Feminine : газета newspaper, Россия Russia, дочь daughter
• Neuter : здание building, радио  radio, письмо letter

Other resources:

Here's the PowerPoint I showed in class.

From Master Russian, Noun number and gender.

From Learning Russian,, Russian gender.

Wikipedia on Russian nouns
 
From Russian for Everyone, gender of nouns explaining hard and soft stems.

Handwriting

Russian cursive handwriting looks, I think, more different from Russian printing than English does.

Here are some resources to complement the textbook for learning how to read and write in it.

First up, a video showing how:

Here is Russian Lessons's page on handwriting, with lots of examples.

And at Lingua Lift, their page on handwriting. They have a practice sheet, which I've placed here for you to download if you wish.

Here's another video:

And finally, a couple of (?) humorous memes:

Key: Лилии, дымишь, дышишь, лишишься, слышишь, шиншиллы, ишемия. lilacs, (you) smoke, (you) breathe, (you) will lack something, (you) hear, chinchillas, ischemia

The word is дышишь, you breathe, and the Russian caption means "A strong nation will overcome even by its language"

Pronunciation

Some tips from around the web. First, here is a YouTube video made by a native speaker to teach pronunciation.

Just Russian is a blog written by a Russian tutor in London. Some of it is London-specific, but most of it is helpful to any learner. This link is to their tips on pronunciation.

This page provides a comprehensive listing of every irregularly stressed word with references and explanatory articles. Very helpful.

Master Russian is a very useful site; this link is to their section on stress.

Here's some discussion on Russian stress, including some helpful hints about the types of patterns.

This web-based tool will add stress marks to any Russian text you provide. NOTE: you have to sign up to get more than 50 characters at a time, either a free registration for 100 characters or a paid subscription for unlimited.

Stress

Unlike some languages (but like English) the stress in Russian is unpredictable. There are a few patterns, but basically you just have to learn the word's stress along with its spelling and gender (or type). Stress is crucial, as there are many words that are differentiated only by stress, for instance:

• мука (torture) – мука (flour)
• памок (castle) – замок (lock)
• засыпать (to fall asleep) – засыпать (to fill, to pour)
• полки (shelves) – полки (regiments)
• парить (to soar) – парить (to steam)
• уже (already) – уже (narrower)
• стоящий (standing) – стоящий (worthwhile)
• писать (to write) – писать (to pee)
• дорогой (instrumental case of дорога - road) - дорогой (expensive, dear)
• потом (instrumental case of пот - sweat) - потом (then, afterwards)

Most nouns have regular, non-moving stress. On the other hand, many important nouns have shifting stress, which means that different forms of the same word may have the stress on different syllables (for example слова/слова (genitive singular/nominative plural of слoво, "word"). Verbs can have shifting stress too. There are two common irregularities:

1. In the present tense forms: 1st person singular is stressed on the final syllable, the rest of the forms are stressed on a previous syllable.
2. In the past tense forms: the feminine form is stressed on the final а, while the other forms are stressed on a previous syllable.

Some of those patterns I mentioned are:

• Long-form adjectives have perfectly regular stress: either it is fixed on a root syllable, or it is fixed at the end.
• the letter ё is always stressed (with rare exceptions of borrowed and complex words like трёхъярусный three-tiered)
• the -ый and -ий adjectival endings are never stressed
• the -ство and -ость endings are rarely stressed (количество, детство, радость, личность quantity, childhood, joy, personality)
• words containing -тель- tend to have the preceding syllable stressed (зритель, читатель, питательный witness, reader, nourishing)
• words ending in -ие and -ия also tend to be stressed on the preceding syllable (чтение, зрение, посвящение, история, компания, революция a reading, sight, dedication, history, company, revolution ) with certain exceptions
• words ending in -ак tend to be stressed on the last syllable (табак, дурак, зодиак, tobacco, fool, zodiac) with exceptions (завтрак, breakfast)

On-line dictionaries

Multitran.ru - very good site for current usage; lots of databases, phrase examples

 English-to-Russian - the standard Eng-Ru, by Smirnitsky

 Abbreviations - a constantly updated abbreviations database

 Russian Wiktionary - Викисловарь

 Russian Wikipedia - Википедия

 Slovoborg - Словоборг – Russian ‘Urban dictionary’

 Slovopedia - Slovopedia (combo encyclopedia/dictionary)

And a couple of sites which offer searches in any or all of a multitude of dictionaries
 'Dictionary World' - including Архитектурный словарь architecture; Бизнес словарь business; Биографический словарь biographical; Большой энциклопедический словарь encyclopedic dictionary;  Исторический словарь history; Медицинский словарь medical terms; Морской словарь naval and seafaring terms; Политический словарь political; Религиозный словарь religious; Социологический словарь sociology; Строительный словарь construction; Финансовый словарь finance; Экономический словарь economics; Юридический словарь legal; Словарь компьютерного жаргона computer jargon; Словарь мер и весов weights and measures;  and many others

 Russian Academy- many dictionaries, searchable in combinations or alone including various of the major defining dictionaries (think Merriam-Webster), English-Russian, and specialized dictionaries.

Online resources

Here are a number of online resources. I'll be adding more, so check back to this post.


Here are various websites that may be helpful. Note that an .ru site originates in the Russian Federation.

• Wikipedia - Article on Russian Language
  A substantive encyclopedic introduction and overview in English of the Russian language – its Alphabet, Grammar, History, and the like – with many hyperlinks to deeper sub-topics.
• Russian Writing System
  Useful for those who need a basic introduction to Russian alphabet for elementary research. Site also has additional information and language related links.
• Virtual Russian Keyboard and Spell Checker
   Useful tool that allows one to type in Russian using mouse and then do directed searches in Google, Yahoo, YouTube, etc.
• Just Russian
  a blog written by a Russian tutor in London. Some of it is London-specific, but most of it is helpful to any learner. This link is to their tips on pronunciation.
• The Russian Blog
  another useful site
  
• Master Russian
  a very useful site with many lessons and resources for beginning learners
• Learning Russian Step by Step
  a useful site with lots of audio for practice
• Gramota.ru
  Put in a partial word and get all the possible words it could be. Put in a whole word and see how to pronounce it. In both cases, you also get the definitions.
• Google Translate
  Translate a word, a phrase, or a document from Russian to English or reverse. Far from perfect but getting better all the time. Word level much better than phrase or text. 
• Multitran.ru
  Much better than Google, this user-updated database is excellent for translating words and phrases, giving you meanings across many language domains. It also gives you the complete declension or conjugation of a word.
• Russian Language Mentor A comprehensive site for language learning, with reading and listening comprehension as well as explanations of many concepts in Russian grammar. Some of this will be advanced, but the "Grammar Review" section is helpful from the beginning.
  
• An Interactive Russian Online Reference Grammar - Robert Beard
  By Bucknell University professor. Solid basic grammar – from Cyrillic Alphabet and Rules of Pronunciation to Verbal Word Formation. Explanations of grammatical points are followed by interactive exercises that test and reinforce comprehension of materials covered.
• NCLRC: The Week's News in Simplified Broadcasts
  From National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC). Delivers a survey of the previous week's news in simplified standard Russian. Listeners of Voice of America's "Special English" broadcasts will recognize the slightly slower rate of speech and textual redundancy which characterize these webcasts. With exercises and transcripts.
• George Mitrevski's Homepage
  By Auburn University professor. Russian language resources include: Russian Grammar Tutorials. Interactive Exercises to accompany the beginning Russian textbooks Голоса 1 and Начало 1.