2.2 Grammar: Wait, what’s Case?

There is something in Russian called ‘Case’, and it’s something English, outside of pronouns, does not really have. It’s a new concept for most of us. If anyone has ever talked to you about Russian being a hard language to learn because of all the ‘endings’, this is what they were talking about.

This is just an introduction to what Case is all about.

Посмотри́те (watch):

Why do we have to care about this? Because this is Russian and Russian has Case. Remember way back in Unit 1 when we learned about grammatical gender? Remember how you identify it? By the noun’s ending, right? The endings we learned actually denote the NOMINATIVE CASE. These are the dictionary forms. When you look up a word, you are given the NOMINATIVE CASE forms.

So, with the new Prepositional Case is your SECOND case in Russian. You didn’t know you were learning Nominative Case all last unit, did you? All those grammatical gender endings you learned were Nominative Case endings. Keep that in mind as we move into this new, second case. There will be a new set of endings. Get ready. It’s all about to get VERY VERY Russian up in here.