Russian · Chapter 3 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
The accusative and animate nouns
For a thing it copies the nominative; for a person or animal it copies the genitive.
The short version
You see a stol but a brata
A masculine noun naming a thing does not change in the accusative. A masculine noun naming a person or an animal copies its genitive instead, which in practice means adding -a. In the plural the rule spreads to every gender, so animate plurals take the genitive plural.
Ya vizhu stol. Ya vizhu brata.
Going somewhere takes the accusative
V and na take the accusative when you are moving into or onto a place, and the prepositional when you are already there. If you could ask where to, it is the accusative: v shkolu. If you could ask where, it is the prepositional: v shkole.
Ya idu v shkolu.
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