Russian declension

This principle is relevant for masculine singular nouns of the second declension (see below) and adjectives, and for all plural paradigms (with no gender distinction).

(As none of these endings are ever stressed, due to vowel reduction the pronunciation difference between -ие and -ии may be hardly noticeable in fluent speech.)

[8] Examples: рабо́та – a work/job, ба́ня – a bathhouse, кни́га – a book, ли́ния – a line Note: In the instrumental case, -ою and -ею instead of -ой and -ей endings may be encountered in the singular.

Notes: Examples: фильм – a film/movie, писа́тель – a writer, геро́й – a hero, коммента́рий – a comment Nouns ending in -о and -е are neuter.

[10] Examples ме́сто – a place, мо́ре – a sea, зда́ние – a building The third declension is for predominantly feminine nouns, or with a non-standard termination as shown with exceptional words: дитя ('child', archaic) and путь ('path').

Examples: кость (f) – a bone, мышь (f) – a mouse, и́мя (n) – a name There are various kinds of irregularities in forming plurals.

Some words have an irregular plural form, but a few use suppletion, being substituted by a different root altogether.

Most borrowed words ending in Russian in э/е, и, о, у and stressed а are not declined:[11] кафе, пальто (French: paletot), Дюма etc.

Slavic, as well as Greek, Roman, Jewish and other person names of European or Semitic origin loaned centuries ago, have gender-specific versions of respective patronyms.

To produce a patronym, suffixes -вич- and -вн- are used with final vowel addition or modification: -о for hard consonant (Петро́вич/Петро́вна ⇐ son/daughter of Пётр), -ье for -ий (Григо́рьевич/Григо́рьевна ⇐ Григо́рий), and -е for other cases (Матве́евич/Матве́евна ⇐ Матве́й, И́горевич/И́горевна ⇐ И́горь).

Additionally, Slavic names have short forms, usually meant for affectionate calls (Ива́н – Ва́ня, А́нна – А́ня; equivalent of Johnny, Annie, etc.).

For this reason, neo-vocative is not possible for male names that can't produce short forms with a final vowel (including some popular ones: Влади́мир, Вита́лий, И́горь).

Likewise, there is a neo-vocative form for close relatives: мать – ма́ма – мам (mother – mommy – mom), оте́ц – па́па – пап (father – daddy – dad).

In modern Russian, the short form appears only in the nominative and is used when the adjective is in a predicative role; formerly (as in the bylinas) short adjectives appeared in all other forms and roles, which are not used in modern language, but are nonetheless understandable to Russian speakers as they are declined exactly like nouns of the corresponding gender.

In modern editions of classical poetry some elements of this system are still used if they are important for rhyme or metrics.

A notable example is ending -ыя (bisyllabic) instead of -ой (monosyllabic) for genitive single female adjectives, which were considered bookish and deprecated even in the times of Alexander Pushkin but were still used by him in lines such as «тайна брачныя постели» («Евгений Онегин», IV, L).

Suffix -ов/ев is used to form adjective from a word denoting single human which is masculine and ends on consonant; selection depends on if the stem is hard or soft.

There exist many stable expressions which include possessive adjectives following either of the two declensions shown above: но́ев ковче́г (Noah's ark, from Ной "Noah"), эвкли́дова геоме́трия (Euclidean geometry, from Эвкли́д "Euclides"), ма́рсово по́ле (the Field of Mars), а́вгиевы коню́шни (the Augean stables, from А́вгий "Augeas"), во́лчий аппети́т (a wolfish appetite, from волк "wolf"), крокоди́ловы слёзы (crocodile tears, from крокоди́л "crocodile"), ка́ждый бо́жий день (every God-given day, from Бог "God"), etc.

The following rules apply: Russian has several main classes of numerals (числи́тельные): cardinal, ordinal, collective, and fractional constructions.

[17] Most numbers ending with "1" (in any gender: оди́н, одна́, одно́) require Nominative singular for a noun: два́дцать одна́ маши́на (21 cars), сто пятьдеся́т оди́н челове́к (151 people).

Genitive plural is also used for numbers ending with 11 to 14 and with inexact numerals: сто оди́ннадцать ме́тров (111 meters); мно́го домо́в (many houses).

Approximate numbers are colloquially formed by reversing word order, exchanging numeral and noun: мину́ты три (≈3 minutes).

[19] In nominative and accusative, they always force the noun into genitive plural form (while their own accusative form is dependent on the animacy of the noun): трое друзей на охоту пошли, вижу двоих мужчин, вижу двое саней.

While forming them, upper three orders of numerals are agglutinated to nearest dividing power of 1000, which results in constructing some of the longest natural Russian words, e.g. стапятидесятитрёхты́сячный (153,000-th), while the next is сто пятьдеся́т три ты́сячи пе́рвый (153,001-st).

As with other single-word numerals, it's possible to form nouns and multiplicative adjectives, associated with "1.5": полу́торка (old truck with 1.5 tonnes of payload capacity), полтора́шка (1.5 liter plastic bottle for beverage); полу́торный (something of 150% amount).

Informally, decimal fractional part can be read more conveniently as sequence of simple digits and numbers: два и семь-восемна́дцать-два́дцать во́семь.

Same method is used to read long numerals unrelated to a noun (phone numbers, address indexes, etc.

Russian also has so-called "count form" (счётная фо́рма) for use by nouns in numerical phrases instead of genitive plural (for some words mandatory, for others optional), mainly with units of measure (especially derived from names): во́семь бит (8 bits; not *би́тов), шестна́дцать байт (16 bytes), две́сти два́дцать вольт (220 volts), пять килогра́мм(ов) (5 kilograms; optional).

Полчаса́ (half an hour) is additional exception; other nouns with пол- prefix does not have stressed -а ending.

A few nouns have unrelated suppletive genitive plural forms: 4 го́да, but 5 лет (years); 3 челове́ка, but 30 люде́й/челове́к (people; optional).