Approximate Numbers in Russian: минут десять, человек пять
By Michael McGettrickUpdated 27 September 2026
Russian has a word for about, , and mostly does not bother with it. Instead it does something English cannot do at all: it swaps the order of a number and the noun it is counting, and that single reversal is the whole marker of approximation. This structure sits on the Higher tier of the Pearson Edexcel GCSE specification, tagged for recognition, but it is worth being able to produce as well, because it is how Russian actually talks about roughly-sized quantities in everyday speech, far more often than it reaches for a separate word meaning about.
There is no equivalent move in English. English marks vagueness with an extra word, about, roughly, or so, ish, and leaves the word order alone. Russian marks it by touching nothing but the order, which is exactly why the trick is easy to miss on the page and easy to mishear as a mistake until you know to listen for it.
The trick: reverse the order, keep the case
Take an ordinary counted phrase, number first, noun second, exactly as Russian numbers teaches it:
- ten minutes (exactly)
- five years (exactly)
Now swap the two words, noun first, number second, and nothing else changes:
- about ten minutes
- about five years
That is the entire rule. No new word, no new ending, no change to which case the number demands. still puts its noun in the genitive plural whichever order the two words come in, so stays genitive plural whether it comes before or after . Approximation is carried purely by word order, which is a rare thing in Russian, a language that otherwise leans on endings for almost everything.
More examples, across different noun groups
The inversion works whatever group a number belongs to (one, two-to-four, five-and-up), because it never touches the case rule itself, only the order:
- about five people (takes the genitive plural,, as usual)
- about two hours (takes the genitive singular,, as usual)
- about a hundred roubles
- about ten days
Read carefully: this is the two-to-four group from the numbers article, where the noun takes the genitive singular, , not the genitive plural that five and up would need. The inversion trick sits on top of whichever group the number already belongs to; it changes nothing about which group that is.
The three case groups, exact and approximate side by side
The case a number demands never changes when you invert it, whichever of the three groups from Russian numbers it belongs to. Seeing all three side by side makes that clear:
| group | exact | approximate | case on the noun |
|---|---|---|---|
| one | | (rarely inverted) | nominative |
| two to four | | | genitive singular |
| five and up | | | genitive plural |
is left out of the approximate column deliberately: inverting one of something ( ) is grammatically possible but rarely said, because approximating a single unit does little work; approximation only earns its keep once there is a range worth blurring. From two upwards, the trick applies freely, and the case stays locked to whichever group the number belongs to, exactly as the table shows.
A range instead of a single approximate number
Spoken Russian also stacks two consecutive numbers together, with no word for or between them, to give a range, and this combines naturally with the inversion:
-- about five or six minutes
-- about two or three days
The second number simply continues the same case and group as the first (- are both five-and-up, so both would trigger the genitive plural on their own), and the whole stacked pair inverts as one block in front of, or after, the noun exactly like a single approximate number would.
Compound numbers: the whole number moves, not just its last word
When the number being counted is itself a compound, like twenty-five, the entire number swaps to the far side of the noun as one block; nothing inside the number itself gets reordered:
- twenty-five minutes (exact)
- about twenty-five minutes
keeps its own internal order, unit after tens exactly as usual; only its position relative to changes. A learner who tries to split the compound number across the noun, producing something like , has broken the phrase rather than approximated it.
Так as a spoken reinforcer
In relaxed speech, (so, thus, here working more like English like or or so) sometimes slots in to underline that a number is a rough guess, not a precise count:
.- Like five years or so.
.- About ten minutes, give or take.
never appears in the exact, non-inverted phrase, only alongside the inversion, and it adds nothing grammatically; it is a filler that leans into the vagueness the inverted order already signals, the conversational equivalent of English tacking or so onto the end twice. Recognise it; there is no need to produce it deliberately.
Where the inversion lands in a sentence
The whole inverted phrase behaves as a single unit and slots into a sentence exactly where the ordinary, non-inverted phrase would:
Я.- I will wait about ten minutes.
.- There were about five people there.
.- We walked for about two hours.
Compare each with its exact counterpart, Я (I will wait exactly ten minutes), and the only difference on the page is which word comes first. Said aloud, the approximate version usually also carries a slight rise and fall in intonation across the phrase, the same way English roughly ten minutes gets a lighter, more offhand delivery than exactly ten minutes.
The alternative: около plus the genitive
(around, about) plus the genitive is the other way to mark approximation, and it works with any number without needing the number-noun pair to sit together at all:
- around ten minutes
- around five o'clock, or around five hours
sounds a shade more formal or careful than the inversion trick, and it is the version you will meet more in writing: timetables, official announcements, news reports. In conversation, Russians reach for the inversion far more often, because it needs no extra word and no extra thought about which case will then demand on top of it.
Both exist for a reason: can attach to a number on its own even when there is no accompanying noun close by to invert ( , come round about five), while the inversion trick needs the number and its noun standing next to each other to begin with.
Mistakes English speakers make
Reaching for by default. It is correct, but it is not what a Russian speaker would say first in casual conversation. is more natural than for the same meaning, in the same way approximately ten minutes and ten minutes or so both work in English but do not sound equally casual.
Changing the case when inverting. The case is decided entirely by the number and the counting rule from Russian numbers, never by the new word order. is wrong; it must stay , genitive singular, exactly as it would in the un-inverted phrase.
Trying to invert a number that is not paired with its noun. The trick only works when the number and the noun it counts sit directly together. It cannot mark approximation on a bare number with no noun beside it, such as a price read out as just . Ages work because the noun is there: (he is about twenty).
Assuming this only works with time expressions. is the textbook example, but the same trick works for money, distance, people, anything counted: (about ten kilometres), (about five friends).
Splitting a compound number across the noun. tries to approximate twenty-five minutes by moving only the units digit; the whole compound number has to travel together, , or the phrase becomes nonsense.
What to do next
Practise the swap on the numbers you already use for time and quantity: take , , and reverse each one, keeping the case exactly as it was. Listen for the inversion in real Russian audio, since once you can hear it you will notice it constantly in casual speech. Russian numbers and the case after each is the article that explains the underlying case groups this trick rides on top of, and the Russian course uses approximate quantities naturally in its everyday conversation material.