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Немно́го о языке́ 6.4 Кто така́я Снегу́рочка?

Dative case forms of nouns

In the dative case, masculine and neuter singular nouns will have the ending –у (-ю for soft endings) while feminine nouns have exactly the same forms as in the prepositional case. The basic ending for the dative plural is –ам (-ям for soft endings).

Overview
Dative Case Basic Ending Soft Ending
Masculine/Neuter -у -ю
Feminine same as prepositional same as prepositional
Plural -ам -ям

Note: Because the dative case expresses the idea of «to whom?» and «for whom?» an action happens, the case is often used with proper names.  Russian first names and patronymics in Russian decline like nouns.

Foreign names like Ама́нда and Джош will also decline because they fit easily into typical Russian declension patterns.  If the foreign names do not fit into Russian declensional patterns, they will not decline. For example, Ке́йтлин does not decline because it is a woman's name, but ends in a consonant like a masculine noun. То́ни does not decline because it ends in a vowel other than –а/-я.

Dative Case Adjective Endings

Overview
Dative Case Basic Ending Soft or Spelling Rule Ending
Masculine/Neuter -ому -ему
Feminine -ой -ей
Plural -ым -им

Упражне́ние 1. Identifying cases and functions.

Below are sentences reflecting information from the episodes you have read in this unit.  Each sentence contains at least one noun or noun phrase in the dative. Identify the noun phrase in the dative case, making sure to select all of the elements. You can get a more detailed explanation of the cases and functions in each sentence by clicking on the tab that follows the exercise.

Telling the Date

Сего́дня 15-ое (пятна́дцатое) декабря́. = Today is the fifteenth of December.

To tell a date, Russian uses ordinal numbers from пе́рвое (1st) to три́дцать пе́рвое (31st) together with the genitive case of the month. Notice that the ordinal numbers are all in neuter gender because they agree with an unexpressed neuter noun число́ (date).

Ordinal numbers in their neuter forms
пе́рвое одинна́дцатое два́дцать пе́рвое три́дцать пе́рвое
второ́е двена́дцатое два́дцать второ́е
тре́тье трина́дцатое два́дцать тре́тье
четвёртое четы́рнадцатое два́дцать четвёртое
пя́тое пятна́дцатое два́дцать пя́тое
шесто́е шестна́дцатое два́дцать шесто́е
седьмо́е семна́дцатое два́дцать седьмо́е
восьмо́е восемна́дцатое два́дцать восьмо́е
девя́тое девятна́дцатое два́дцать девя́тое
деся́тое двадца́тое тридца́тое
Months in the genitive case
января́ апре́ля ию́ля октября́
февраля́ ма́я а́вгуста ноября́
ма́рта ию́ня сентября́ декабря́

Упражне́ние 2

Answer the following questions about the spelling of ordinal numbers.

Упражне́ние 3. Listening Exercise

Listen and type in the day and the month that you hear as digits. Note that when expressed in digits, Russians write the day first and the month second and with a period rather than a / sign (e.g. April 1 = 01.04).

Telling Age

Упражне́ние 4. Ско́лько лет на́шим геро́ям?

Think about the characters in our story and guess the age that you think they are likely to be from the two choices that you have.

The Russian construction for telling ages works quite differently from English.  Literally, we say, "To the person [there are] X number of years."

Noticing

Reread the correct sentences above, looking carefully at the case forms of the characters’ names. What do you notice?

Re-read the sentences again, looking closely at the word год/го́да/лет, which are all forms of the Russian word for year. The choice of forms depends on the number that goes with the word year.

оди́н
(and its compounds ... два́дцать оди́н, три́дцать оди́н, и т. д.)		 год
два, три, четы́ре
(and their compounds ... два́дцать два, два́дцать три, три́дцать четы́ре, и т. д.)		 го́да
all other numbers
(пять, шесть, семь, оди́ннадцать, двена́ддцать, два́дцать, три́дцать, и т. д.) 		лет

While you are just learning to count years to express ages, this varied pattern of usage with numbers will apply to other words as well.

Упражне́ние 5

You will hear a number of sentences telling the age of various people. Listen to the start of the expression and  pick the form год/го́да/лет that appropriately finishes the sentence.