Russian Nouns in the Genitive Singular

  • October 1, 2017

In this post we take a look at the endings of singular nouns in the genitive case. The genitive case often gets a bad rap for being one of the most difficult cases in the Russian language. Admittedly the plural noun endings in this case aren't a walk in the park. 

Hopefully in this post you'll learn everything you need to master singular nouns, and eliminate some of the confusion that often surrounds this grammatical case.  

Masculine & neuter nouns

Hard endings

The basic genitive endings for masculine and neuter nouns with a hard ending is

nominative

genitive

язык

языка

Борис

Бориса

окно

окна

письмо

письма

Soft endings

The basic genitive ending for masculine and neuter nouns with a soft ending is .

nominative

genitive

общежитие

общежития

Словарь

Словаря

музей

музея

Дмитрий

Дмитрия

Feminine nouns

Hard endings

The basic genitive endings for feminine nouns that end in a hard stem is .

nominative

genitive

школа

школы

мама

мамы

Москва

Москвы

Soft endings

The basic genitive endings for feminine nouns that end with a soft stem is .

nominative

genitive

кухня

кухни

Оля

Оли

тётя

тёти

лекция

лекции

кровать

кровати

Feminine nouns with the 7-letter spelling rule

Feminine nouns that end in a hard stem with one of the following 7 letters with get an ending instead of an ending. 

The 7 letter spelling rule:

Don't use ы after the letters г, к, х, ж, ш, щ, and ч. Instead use и

nominative

genitive

книга

книги

бабушка

бабушки

Маша

Маши

Final thoughts

The endings for the genitive singular aren't that complicated. After a bit of study and practice you should be able to pick them up right away!

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