Russian Pronouns: The Personal Pronouns in All Six Cases

Russian personal pronouns are the first case table worth learning, and the one to learn before the nouns. Я becomes меня́, мне and мной depending on its job in the sentence, exactly as English I becomes me, and because you use a pronoun in nearly every sentence you say, drilling them pays back faster than anything else in Russian grammar.

They are also a closed list. Eight pronouns, six cases, heavy overlap. You can finish this table in a week, which is not something that can be said of the nouns.

The eight pronouns

The Latin column spells each word letter for letter, the way you can type it in any exercise here, with the stress marked. The sound is not always the spelling: an unstressed о is said as a short a in standard Russian, which is why она́ (oná) sounds like aná.

Two things differ from English straight away. Он, она́ and оно́ follow grammatical gender, not life: a table, стол, is masculine, so it is он; a book, кни́га, is feminine, so it is она́.

Где стол? Он там. - Where is the table? It is over there.

Где кни́га? Она́ зде́сь. - Where is the book? It is here.

And они́ has no gender at all. English speakers expect a Russian they to split like the singulars, and it does not.

The full chart: all six cases

Nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, prepositional, each spelled in Latin letters with the stress marked:

Оно́ declines exactly like он everywhere except the nominative, so it needs no column of its own.

Now count forms instead of cells. Accusative and genitive are identical in every column. Dative and prepositional are identical for I and you. Нас and вас cover three cases each. The real memory load is about thirty short words, most of which you will have heard dozens of times before you sit down to learn them.

The н- rule for he, she and they

The third-person pronouns take an extra н- at the front whenever they follow a preposition directly:

That is why the prepositional row of the chart is all н-: the prepositional case only ever appears after a preposition, so it always has one. Otherwise the rule is mechanical: для неё (for her), без него́ (without him), о них (about them). The exceptions are a few longer prepositions built from other words, such as благодаря (thanks to), which keep the bare form: благодаря ему.

It applies to он, она́, оно́ and они́ and to nothing else. Меня́, тебя́ and нас never take it. And the possessive его́, meaning his, never takes it either: у него́ means he has, but with his brother is с его́ бра́том, with no н-, because there the word belongs to the brother, not to the preposition. The possessives get their own article, Russian possessive pronouns.

What each case is doing, with the pronoun

The case chart is only useful once you can hear why a form was chosen. The everyday uses:

• Accusative, the direct object: Я тебя́ люблю́ (I love you). Он меня́ не зна́ет (he does not know me).
• Genitive, most often after у for having, and after нет for not having: У меня́ есть брат (I have a brother). У него́ нет маши́ны (he has no car). The genitive case covers the construction properly.
• Dative, the person something is given or said to: Дай мне кни́гу (give me the book), Скажи́ ему́ (tell him). It is also the case of the person who experiences something: Мне нра́вится (I like it, literally to me it is pleasing), Мне хо́лодно (I am cold), Мне два́дцать лет (I am twenty). The dative case is where that habit is explained.
• Instrumental, mostly after с (with): Иди́ со мной (come with me), Я говорю́ с ним (I am talking to him).
• Prepositional, after о (about) and after в and на for location: Я ду́маю о тебе́ (I am thinking about you), Она́ говори́т о нём (she is talking about him). See the prepositional case.

Notice the small prepositions stretching to fit the pronoun. С becomes со before мной, к becomes ко before мне, and о becomes о́бо before мне: со мной, ко мне, о́бо мне. That is pronunciation, not grammar. A lone с or к does not sit comfortably in front of the cluster мн-, so Russian gives it a vowel, and о lengthens to о́бо there by the same habit.

Ты and вы: the choice you make before you speak

Ты is for one person you are close to: a friend, a family member, a child, a pet. Вы is for more than one person, and also for any single person you should be polite to: a stranger, a shop assistant, a teacher, anyone older or senior.

This is not optional politeness. Calling a stranger ты in Russian is rude in a way English has no equivalent for, since English lost its thou centuries ago. Default to вы with anyone you have not been invited to address otherwise. Being too formal costs you nothing; being too familiar can cost you the conversation. The commonest polite phrases are all вы phrases already: Спаси́бо вам (thank you), Как вас зову́т? (what is your name?).

Do you need the subject pronoun at all?

More often than in Spanish or Italian. The present-tense verb ending does say who is acting, so Зна́ю on its own is a complete answer, and in quick speech Russians drop the pronoun freely. But the past tense has no person endings, only gender (the Russian past tense article explains why), so a past-tense verb without a pronoun leaves the listener guessing who did it. The practical rule for a learner: keep the subject pronoun. It is never wrong, and dropping it is a stylistic choice you can make later.

One more: себя

Себя́ means oneself and points back to the subject of the same sentence, whoever that is: myself, yourself, himself, themselves. It has no nominative, because it can never be the subject, and it declines like тебя́: себя́, себе́, собо́й, себе́. The -ся ending on reflexive verbs is a worn-down form of it, which is a later article of its own.

Mistakes English speakers make

1. Saying the г in его́. It is yevó, with a v. The same г-as-v rule runs through every -его and -ого case ending in Russian and through сего́дня (today), so fixing it once fixes it everywhere.
2. Using the nominative after a preposition. Under pressure, learners reach for the form they know best and produce с я, which sounds to a Russian exactly as with I sounds to you. After a preposition, a pronoun is never in the nominative.
3. Forgetting the н-. У его́ is wrong; у него́ is right. If the pronoun is he, she, it or they and a preposition is directly in front of it, add the н-.
4. Calling everything оно́. A thing is only оно́ if its noun is neuter. A table is он, a book is она́, and a learner who says оно́ about both is doing the English thing of treating it as the default.
5. Mixing ты and вы to the same person. Choose one and stay with it for the whole conversation. Switching mid-sentence sounds like you forgot who you were talking to.

What to do next

Learn the chart one column at a time, starting with я and ты, and say each form inside a sentence rather than as a list: меня́ inside У меня́ есть, мне inside Дай мне. When the two columns come out without thinking, the others follow in a day each. Then take the pronoun forms you already know into the Russian cases chart, where the noun endings turn out to echo them. The page for я has its forms with audio, and the Russian course drills them from the second chapter.