Russian Genitive Case: Endings, Uses and у меня нет

The Russian genitive case is the one you will reach for most often once you get past this is a book. It marks the owner, it marks what is missing, it counts things, and it follows about twenty prepositions. English does all of that with the single word of and a stray apostrophe. Russian does it with one set of endings, and once you have them, a startling amount of ordinary speech opens up.

If you have not met the six cases as a system yet, the Russian cases overview is the place to start. This page is the second pass on the genitive: every job it does, the full set of endings, and the plural that every textbook quietly apologises for.

The five jobs of the genitive

The first and last rows are the ones English speakers find natural, because English uses of and some there too. The middle three are where the case earns its keep, and absence is the one that turns up in almost every conversation.

The singular endings

The genitive singular is short and regular. Two endings for masculine and neuter nouns, two for feminine, and the choice between each pair is the hard-soft distinction you already use elsewhere.

Three things to notice. First, день becomes дня, not деня: the е in the middle is a fleeting vowel that drops out as soon as an ending arrives. It does the same in оте́ц, which becomes отца́. Second, the -ы/-и choice in feminine nouns is a spelling rule, not a grammar one. Russian never writes ы after г, к, х, ж, ш, ч or щ, so кни́га has to become кни́ги and де́вушка has to become де́вушки. Third, the ending follows the shape of the word, not its meaning: па́па and мужчи́на are masculine, but they end in -а, so they take the feminine ending and become па́пы and мужчи́ны.

A small set of nouns do their own thing and simply have to be learned: и́мя and вре́мя become и́мени and вре́мени, and мать and дочь insert an -ер- to become ма́тери and до́чери.

Possession: the owner comes second

Russian has no apostrophe-s. To say whose something is, you put the thing first and the owner second, in the genitive:

кни́га бра́та (kniga brata) - the brother's book, literally the book of the brother

маши́на ма́мы (mashina mamy) - Mum's car

коне́ц неде́ли (konets nedeli) - the end of the week

Word order here is fixed in a way it is not elsewhere in Russian. The owner follows the thing it owns. English speakers put the owner first on instinct, because that is where the apostrophe-s puts it, and бра́та кни́га reads to a Russian ear like a line of poetry or a mistake, usually the second.

Absence: у меня нет and everything built on it

This is the construction worth drilling until it is automatic. Russian does not normally say I have with a verb. It says at me there is:

У меня́ есть сестра́. (U menya yest sestra.) - I have a sister.

Here сестра́ is the subject, in the nominative. Now negate it:

У меня́ нет бра́та. (U menya net brata.) - I do not have a brother.

Нет replaces есть, and the thing that is missing drops into the genitive. It is no longer the subject of anything, because there is nothing there to be a subject. That is the logic of the whole construction: absence is expressed through the genitive case, and you cannot say I don't have a book in Russian without it.

The same pattern covers anything that is not somewhere:

Зде́сь нет воды́. (Zdes net vody.) - There is no water here.

Бра́та нет до́ма. (Brata net doma.) - My brother is not at home.

Compare that last one with Брат до́ма, my brother is at home. The moment he is absent, he stops being брат and becomes бра́та.

In the past and the future, нет becomes не бы́ло and не бу́дет, and the verb never changes, whatever the gender or number of the missing thing: always neuter бы́ло in the past, always бу́дет in the future. There is no subject for it to agree with.

Вчера́ не бы́ло воды́. (Vchera ne bylo vody.) - Yesterday there was no water.

За́втра не бу́дет вре́мени. (Zavtra ne budet vremeni.) - There will be no time tomorrow.

With a pronoun, the owner in the у construction is itself in the genitive, because у takes the genitive. The genitive pronouns are меня́, тебя́, его́, её, нас, вас and их, and after a preposition the third-person ones gain an н-: у него́, у неё, у них.

У него́ мно́го де́нег. (U nego mnogo deneg.) - He has a lot of money.

Quantity: много, мало, сколько and the numbers

Words of quantity take the genitive: мно́го (a lot), ма́ло (little, few), немно́го (a little), не́сколько (several) and ско́лько (how much, how many). A countable noun goes into the genitive plural and an uncountable one stays singular:

мно́го люде́й - a lot of people (plural)

не́сколько дней - several days (plural)

ма́ло вре́мени - not much time (singular)

The numbers are the same machinery with a twist. Оди́н agrees with its noun like an adjective, два, три and четы́ре take the genitive singular, and пять to два́дцать take the genitive plural: два бра́та but пять бра́тьев. Above twenty, the last digit decides. That rule is precise enough to get its own article on Russian numbers, and it is the single most common reason a Russian sentence with a number in it goes wrong.

The prepositions that take the genitive

More prepositions take the genitive than any other case, which is part of why it turns up so often. The ones you will meet first:

Ко́фе in that table does not change at all, because it is one of many borrowed nouns that never decline, whatever case they are in. Вокру́г (around), о́коло and во́зле (near), среди́ (among) and ми́мо (past) join the list as you go on. There is no shortcut here: learn the preposition and its case together, the way you learn a noun with its gender.

The genitive plural, the one awkward row

Everything so far has been tidy. The genitive plural is not, and it is worth saying so honestly rather than pretending a single rule covers it. The good news is that it follows the shape of the nominative singular, so you can usually predict it.

The zero ending is the surprise: the genitive plural of кни́га is simply книг, shorter than the nominative. When dropping the vowel would leave an unpronounceable cluster at the end, Russian slips a vowel in to break it up. That is how окно́ becomes окон, де́вушка becomes девушек and сестра́ becomes сестёр.

And then there are the irregulars, which are irregular because they are common:

Год borrows лет from an old word for summer, so five years is пять лет, not anything built on год. Челове́к borrows from лю́ди in general use, but after a number it keeps its own form: пять челове́к, five people. Learn those six as vocabulary and the rest of the table will look after itself.

One thing the table cannot show you is stress. It often moves in the genitive, and the same spelling can mean different things: до́ма stressed on the first syllable is both at home and of the house, while stressed on the last syllable it is houses. Learn the stress with each word rather than trying to derive it.

Mistakes English speakers make

Leaving the missing thing in the nominative. У меня́ нет машина is the classic, and it is wrong: after нет, the thing that is absent is always genitive, so У меня́ нет маши́ны.

Putting the owner first. English puts the apostrophe-s owner in front. Russian puts the owner after, in the genitive: маши́на отца́. Отца́ маши́на does turn up in casual speech for emphasis, but it is not the neutral order.

Forgetting the н- after a preposition. У него́ is he has. У его on its own is wrong. The catch is that possessive его́, meaning his, never takes the н-, so у его́ бра́та, his brother has, is perfectly correct. The н- appears only when the pronoun itself is the thing after the preposition.

Making бы́ло agree. In Маши́ны не бы́ло, there was no car, the verb stays neuter. Машины не была sounds like you are trying to agree with a subject that does not exist.

Counting in the wrong case. Пять бра́та is wrong; after five it has to be пять бра́тьев. Two to four take the singular genitive, five to twenty the plural.

What to do next

Drill у меня́ нет until it comes out without thought, with every noun you know. It is the highest-value construction on this page, and it trains the genitive singular every time you use it. Then learn the six irregular plurals as words, not as grammar. Leave the rest of the plural table to reading: you will recognise книг and дней long before you need to produce them.

The genitive endings show up again on every adjective, which is where Russian adjectives take over, and the possessives мой and твой inherit the same pattern, as Russian possessive pronouns shows. The pronouns you just met (меня́, тебя́, его́) come back in every lesson of the Russian course, which is where they get drilled on real sentences rather than tables.