Russian Numbers 1-100: Counting, and the Case After Each

Russian numbers take an afternoon to learn as a list. Using them takes longer, because every Russian number decides the case of the noun that follows it, and it decides differently depending on how many there are. Одна́ кни́га, две кни́ги, пять книг: one book, two books, five books, and three different forms of the word for book.

The rule is three groups, and once you have them it never changes: one agrees with the noun like an adjective, two to four take the genitive singular, five and up take the genitive plural. Everything below is those three groups, plus the list itself. Cardinal numbers are on the Pearson Edexcel GCSE Russian specification at both Foundation and Higher tier.

Russian numbers 1-20

Stress is not marked in ordinary Russian, so it is marked here in the transliteration, with an accent on the stressed vowel. Learn it with the number. A number said with the stress in the wrong place is still understood, but it is the quickest tell that you learned from a page.

Zero, ноль, is a noun rather than a number, and whatever it counts goes into the genitive plural: ноль гра́дусов, zero degrees. It has an older twin, нуль, and that is where the fixed phrase с нуля́, from scratch, comes from; the genitive of ноль itself is ноля.

The teens are built the same way every time: the unit, then -надцать, a worn-down on ten. The spelling has three small traps:

• the soft sign of five to nine drops out: пятна́дцать, not пятьнадцать;
• two becomes две- in двена́дцать;
• four loses its last vowel in четы́рнадцать.

The stress does not follow the pattern. It sits on the -на- in most of them and moves forward in eleven and fourteen, and the only way to get it right is to have heard it.

The tens, hundreds and thousands

The tens come in three patterns. Twenty and thirty are two and three plus -дцать, the same worn-down ten as the teens. Fifty to eighty are the unit plus -десят, and here the unit keeps its soft sign in the middle of the word: пятьдеся́т, шестьдеся́т, се́мьдесят, во́семьдесят. Watch the stress in the table: it falls at the end of fifty and sixty but at the start of seventy and eighty.

Then two misfits: forty is со́рок, possibly from an old word for a bundle of forty pelts, and ninety is девяно́сто, not the девятьдесят the pattern would predict. Everything else is assembled from parts you already have.

Bigger numbers are written as they are said, largest first, with no and: два́дцать оди́н is twenty-one, сто два́дцать пять is 125. There is nothing to learn about assembly beyond the words themselves.

One: an adjective in disguise

Оди́н agrees with its noun in gender, exactly as an adjective does, and the noun stays in the nominative:

That last row looks like a joke and is not. Some Russian nouns exist only in the plural, часы́ (a clock or a watch) and де́ньги (money) among them, and одни́ is the form that counts one of them.

In most sentences Russian leaves оди́н out altogether. У меня́ есть брат already means I have a brother; there is no article to supply, so the number appears only when the one-ness itself matters.

Two, three and four: the genitive singular

After два, три and четы́ре the noun goes into the genitive singular:

два стола́ (dva stolá) - two tables

три бра́та (tri bráta) - three brothers

четы́ре дня (chetýre dnya) - four days

Two has a feminine form, две, which the other two do not:

две кни́ги (dve knígi) - two books

две мину́ты (dve minúty) - two minutes

This is the group that looks wrong to English speakers, because two books are plainly plural and the noun looks singular. It is a fossil of the old Slavic dual, a separate number for pairs of things: the dual belonged to two, three and four came to copy it, and it collapsed into what is now spelled identically to the genitive singular. You do not need the history to use it. You need to know that two to four always pull the noun into that one form.

Five and up: the genitive plural

From пять onwards, through the teens and up to два́дцать, the noun goes into the genitive plural:

пять книг (pyat knig) - five books

де́сять мину́т (désyat minút) - ten minutes

шесть дней (shest dney) - six days

The genitive plural is the most irregular row in the Russian case tables, which is why this group costs more than the other two. Кни́га loses its ending entirely to give книг; стол gains one to give столов. Learn the genitive plural of each common noun as you meet it, rather than trying to derive it.

The reason for this group is also historical: five and above were once nouns in their own right, meaning a five of, and a noun of quantity takes the genitive plural in Russian exactly as мно́го (many) and не́сколько (several) still do. Мно́го книг and пять книг are the same construction.

The whole rule on one noun

Here are all three groups on the nouns you will count most often:

Two rows need a note. Year has a borrowed genitive plural: after five it is лет, from a different word altogether, and nothing about год warns you. And person, челове́к, uses the short form челове́к again after five rather than люде́й, which is the plural you use with мно́го (мно́го люде́й, a lot of people).

Compound numbers: only the last word counts

For any number above twenty, the last word decides the case, and the rest of the number is ignored:

This is where English intuition fails hardest. Twenty-one years is obviously plural, and Russian says два́дцать оди́н год, with the singular nominative, because the last word is one. The teens are the one exception to watch: оди́ннадцать is a single word, not ten plus one, so it takes the genitive plural like every other number from five to twenty.

Here is one noun through all three groups, so you can hear the switch: два́дцать оди́н стол, два́дцать два стола́, два́дцать пять столов. Gender travels to the last word as well: два́дцать одна́ кни́га, два́дцать две кни́ги.

Thousands and millions are nouns

Ты́сяча is a feminine noun, declined like кни́га, so it obeys the three groups itself: ты́сяча (or одна́ ты́сяча when the one matters), две ты́сячи, пять ты́сяч. It is две, not два, because thousand is feminine. Миллио́н is a masculine noun, declined like стол: оди́н миллио́н, два миллиона, пять миллио́нов. A billion is миллиа́рд, a masculine noun that works exactly like миллио́н.

Because they are nouns, whatever they count goes into the genitive plural, however many thousands there are: ты́сяча рубле́й, две ты́сячи рубле́й, миллио́н до́лларов. If a smaller number follows, the last word takes over again, which is why the table above has ты́сяча три дня.

First, second, third: the ordinals

Ordinals are adjectives and agree with their noun like any other: пе́рвый уро́к (the first lesson), пе́рвая кни́га (the first book).

In a compound ordinal only the last word is an ordinal, as in English: два́дцать пе́рвый, twenty-first. Dates and floors, where Russian uses ordinals most, are covered in the dates article.

Numbers you will actually say

The constructions that come up every day:

• Age: the person in the dative, then the years. Мне два́дцать лет (I am twenty), Ему́ три го́да (he is three). To ask: Ско́лько тебе́ лет? The dative is the same one the personal pronouns article covers.
• Time: Сейча́с два часа́ (it is two o'clock), пять часо́в (five o'clock).
• Price: Ско́лько стои́т? (how much is it?) Сто до́лларов.
• How often: Я был там три ра́за (I have been there three times). For a rate, add в and the accusative: два ра́за в неде́лю, twice a week.
• How many: ско́лько, мно́го, ма́ло and не́сколько all take the genitive plural with things you can count, just as five does: ско́лько книг, не́сколько мину́т.

Mistakes English speakers make

1. Putting the noun in the plural after two. Two to four take the genitive singular every time: два стола́, never два столы. And for a feminine noun the number itself changes: две кни́ги, not два.
2. Treating twenty-one as plural. Два́дцать оди́н год, not a plural form. The last word of the number is one, so the noun behaves as if there were one.
3. Forgetting that year becomes лет. Because age is the first number most learners need, this is also the first number mistake they make. Пять лет, два́дцать лет, never a form of год after five.
4. Counting people with люде́й. After a number it is пять челове́к. Люде́й belongs with мно́го and ско́лько.
5. Counting thousands as if they were numbers. Ты́сяча is a noun and takes the case like one: две ты́сячи, пять ты́сяч, never пять ты́сяча.

One caveat worth knowing, so that it does not ambush you later: everything above holds when the number phrase is the subject or a direct object that is a thing.

With people or animals as the object, two to four take the genitive plural instead (Я вижу двух братьев, I can see two brothers). In the other cases the number and the noun both decline together (с двумя́ друзья́ми, with two friends), and the three-group rule stops applying. That is a later problem. For the first year of Russian, the three groups cover almost every number you will say.

What to do next

Learn one to ten with the stress tonight; it is ten words. Then drill the table above out loud until оди́н год, два го́да, пять лет come out as a single rhythm rather than a calculation, because that one row is the whole rule in miniature. The genitive forms you are leaning on are covered properly in the genitive case, and the Russian course puts the numbers to work in real sentences from its second chapter.