Russian · Chapter 6 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer

Question words: кто, что, где, когда

Five words and no inversion, but кто and что still decline through all six cases.

The short version

Where you are and where you go are two words

Russian splits English where three ways: где for location, куда for destination, откуда for origin. Any verb of going wants куда, so asking где ты идёшь is simply wrong. The answers match the questions too: дома answers где, домой answers куда.

Kuda ty idyosh? Domoy.

Where are you going? Home.

Who changes case, just like any pronoun

Кто is a pronoun, so it takes the case of the job it does in the sentence. Asking who you saw needs the accusative кого, because the person is the object, and a preposition always goes in front: s kem, never kem ... s. Work out the case of the answer and put the question word in it.

Kogo ty vidish?

Who do you see?

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 15 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

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Lesson 14 of 22 in this chapter

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