Russian declension

In Russian grammar, the system of declension is elaborate and complex. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, demonstratives, most numerals and other particles are declined for two grammatical numbers (singular and plural) and six grammatical cases ; some of these parts of speech in the singular are also declined by three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter). This gives many spelling combinations for most of the words, which is needed for grammatical agreement within and (often) outside the proposition. Also, there are several paradigms for each declension with numerous irregular forms.

Russian is more conservative in its declensions than many other modern Indo-European languages (English, for example, has almost no declensions remaining in the language).

Nouns

Nominal declension is subject to six cases – nominative, accusative, genitive, prepositional, dative, instrumental – in two numbers (singular and plural), and absolutely obeying grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter). Up to ten additional cases are identified in linguistics textbooks, although all of them are either incomplete (do not apply to all nouns) or degenerate (appear identical to one of the six simple cases). The most recognized additional cases are locative ( — in the forest, on the bridge, in (the) blood), partitive ( — (some) tea, sugar, cognac), and several forms of vocative ( — (O) Lord, God, father). The adjectives, pronouns, and the first two cardinal numbers further vary by gender. Old Russian also had a third number, the dual, but it has been lost except for its use in the nominative and accusative cases with the numbers two, three and four (''e.g.'' , "two chairs", now reanalyzed as genitive singular).

Russian noun cases often replace the usage of prepositions in other Indo-European languages. Their usage can be summarised as:
* Nominative – the “subject” case
* Accusative – the “direct object” case
* Genitive – corresponding to the possessive case or “of + (noun)”
* Prepositional – used with certain prepositions, such as “in”, “on” etc.
* Dative – corresponding to “to + (noun)" or the indirect object
* Instrumental – denoting an instrument used in an action

There are no articles, neither definite nor indefinite (such as ''the'', ''a'', ''an'' in English), in the Russian language. The sense of a noun is determined from the context in which it appears. That said, there are some means of expressing whether a noun is definite or indefinite. They are:
* The use of a direct object in the genitive instead of the accusative in negation signifies that the noun is indefinite, compare: "" ("I don't see a book" or "I don't see any books") and "" ("I don't see the book").
* The use of the numeral one sometimes signifies that the noun is indefinite, e.g.: "?" – "" ("Why did it take you so long?" – "Well, I met one afriend and had to talk").
* Word order may also be used for this purpose, compare "" ("Into the room rushed a boy") and "" ("The boy rushed into the room").
* The plural form may signify indefiniteness: "" ("You can buy this in shops") vs. "" ("You can buy this in the shop").

The category of animacy is relevant in Russian nominal and adjectival declension. Specifically, the accusative has two possible forms in many paradigms, depending on the animacy of the referent. For animate referents (sentient species, some animals, professions and occupations), the accusative form is generally identical to the genitive form (genitive-accusative syncretism). For inanimate referents (simple lifeforms, objects, states, notions), the accusative form is identical to the nominative form (nominative-accusative syncretism). 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). In the tables below, this behavior is indicated by the abbreviation ''N or G'' in the row corresponding to the accusative case.

In Russian there are three declensions:
* The ''first declension'' is used for feminine nouns ending with and some masculine nouns having the same form as those of feminine gender, such as "papa" or "uncle"; also there are common-gender nouns like "teaser" which are masculine or feminine depending on the person they refer to.
* The ''second declension'' is used for most masculine and neuter nouns.
* The ''third declension'' is used for feminine nouns ending in ь.

There is also a group of several irregular "different-declension nouns" (russian: разносклоня́емые существи́тельные), consisting of a few neuter nouns ending in (e.g. "time") and one masculine noun "way". However, these nouns and their forms have sufficient similarity with feminine third declension nouns that some scholars such as Litnevskaya consider them to be non-feminine forms of this declension, as written in the tables below.

Nouns ending with (not to be confused with substantivated adjectives) are written with instead of in Prepositional: – "streaming – in lower streaming of a river". (As none of these endings are ever stressed, due to vowel reduction the pronunciation difference between and may be hardly noticeable in fluent speech.) But if words and are representing compound preposition meaning "while, during the time of", they are written with -е: "in a time of an hour". For nouns ending in , , or , using in the Prepositional (where endings of some of them are stressed) is usually erroneous, but in poetic speech it may be acceptable (as we replace with for metric or rhyming purposes): ' ( F. Tyutchev).

First declension

Most first-declension nouns are feminine, some masculine. The same endings apply for both genders.

#After a sibilant (ж, ч, ш, щ) or a velar (, or ) consonant, is written.
#After a sibilant, is written when stressed; when unstressed.
#After a soft consonant, is written when stressed; when unstressed.

Examples:
– a work/job, – a bathhouse, – a book, – a line

Note: In the instrumental case, and instead of and endings may be encountered in the singular.

Second declension – masculine nouns

Nouns ending in a consonant are marked in the following table with – (thus no ending).

Notes:
# After a sibilant () or a velar (, or ) consonant, is written, or, for some words, ( — — , etc.).
# After a sibilant, is written.
# After a soft consonant, is written when stressed; when unstressed.
# After a sibilant, is written when stressed; when unstressed.

Examples:
– a film/movie, – a writer, – a hero, – a comment

Second declension – neuter nouns

# After a sibilant, is written when stressed; when unstressed.
# After a soft consonant, is written when stressed; when unstressed.
# For nouns ending in in the nominative singular, is written (but when stressed — for the word ).
# After a consonant use otherwise use .
# Also: some masculine nouns ending in in the nominative singular (, diminutive from 'house'); there is only one masculine noun ending in in this declension: .

Examples
– a place, – a sea, – a building

Third declension

The third declension is mostly for feminine nouns, with some masculine and neuter.

# After a sibilant, is written.

Examples:
(f) – a bone, (f) – a mouse, (n) – a name

Irregular plural forms

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. Historically, some of these irregularities come from older declensional patterns that have become mostly obsolete in modern Russian.

# If the word has the lexical meaning "paper", then its declension is normal ( → ). If it has lexical meaning "leaf (of a tree)", its declension is → .

Undeclined nouns

Some nouns (such as borrowings from other languages, abbreviations, etc.) are not modified when they change number and case. This appears mostly when their gender appears to have no ending in any declension which suits the final part of the word: these are masculine names on vowels different from , female names on hard consonants (names like "Trish" won't take the soft sign to go into third declension like native "mouse"). Most borrowed words ending in Russian in and stressed ''а'' are not declined: , (french: paletot), etc. Most abbreviations are undeclined (one exception is ). Many people also think that Georgian surnames on like ( ka, დანელია) shouldn't be declined since they are originally something like Russian possessive genitives.

Personal names

Traditionally, a full Russian name consists of a person name ( – given name or first name), patronym ( – father's name as middle name) and a family name ( – surname or last name). All of these words have the same grammatical gender as biological one. 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 and are used with final vowel addition or modification: for hard consonant ( ⇐ son/daughter of ), for ( ⇐ ), and for other cases ( ⇐ , ⇐ ). Some person names also have versions for both males and females ( – – ).

Additionally, Slavic names have short forms, usually meant for affectionate calls ( – – ; equivalent of Johnny, Annie, etc.). Short forms by themselves can form "reemerging" vocative case (sometimes called neo-vocative); it is used for calling a familiar person, substituting nominative singular by removing last vowel ( – – – – ). 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: ). Likewise, there is a neo-vocative form for close relatives: – – (mother – mommy – mom), – – (father – daddy – dad). When replacing nominative plural (used for always plural nouns), it can be used for collective calls: ("guys, lads") – ("gals") – .

Most family names in Russia are also gender-specific (shown below in male/female pairs) and declinable like most words (including plural form to denote a married couple or a whole family, as "The Smiths"). They can be divided in these categories (sorted by occurrence):
* Russian origin, gender-specific, declinable as nouns: (unstressed for names four of more syllables long), , , (sometimes stressed for names two syllables long);
*Russian origin, gender-agnostic, indeclinable: , ;
* Ukrainian origin, gender-specific, declinable as adjectives: , ;
*Ukrainian or Belorussian origin, gender-agnostic, indeclinable: (mostly stressed), ;
*Ukrainian or Belorussian origin, gender-agnostic, declinable as masculine nouns for males and indeclinable for females: , , , , etc.;
*Other Slavic origin, gender-specific, declinable as adjectives: , ;
*Other Slavic or non-Slavic origin, gender-agnostic, declinable as masculine nouns for males and indeclinable for females: , , , , , etc.

Examples:

Here male name is composed of 2nd declension nouns, but there are exceptional endings for Instrumental (patronym: , not -ом; family name: , not ). Female name is in 1st declension, but ending is used for a family name in all oblique cases. Plural follows adjectival declension, except that Nominative is short .

Adjectives

A Russian adjective () is usually placed before the noun it qualifies, and it agrees with the noun in case, gender, and number. With the exception of a few invariant forms borrowed from other languages, such as 'beige' or 'khaki',These are adjectives and not adverbs, since they can't modify verbs. most adjectives follow one of a small number of regular declension patterns, except for some which provide difficulty in forming the ''short form''. 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.Современный русский язык / Под ред. В. А. Белошапковой.

Adjectives may be divided into three general groups:
* Qualitative () — denote quality of the object; only adjectives in this group generally have degrees of comparison.
* Relational () — denote some sort of relationship; unlikely to act as a predicate or have a short form.
* Possessive () — denote belonging to a specific subject; have some declensional peculiarities.

Adjectival declension

The pattern described below matches the full forms of most adjectives, except possessive ones; it is also used for substantivated adjectives as and for adjectival participles.

#After a sibilant or velar consonant, , instead of , is written.
#When a masculine adjective ends in , the is stressed.
#After a sibilant consonant, neuter adjectives end in . This is sometimes called the rule.
#Accusative in the masculine singular, and in the plural for all genders, depends on animacy, as for nouns.
#Instrumental feminine ending for all adjectives has alternative form , which differs only stylistically from the standard form.

Russian differentiates between hard-stem (as above) and soft-stem adjectives. Note the following:
*Masculine adjectives ending in the nominative in and neuters in are declined as follows: (read: ), , and .
*Feminine adjectives in are declined and .
*Plural adjectives in are declined and .
*Case endings are to be read as .

Examples:

Before 1917, adjectival declension looked quite different, at least in writing; for example, there were special feminine plural forms, as in French. 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 (bisyllabic) instead of (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 ' (, IV, L).

Comparison of adjectives

Comparison forms are usual only for qualitative adjectives and adverbs. Comparative and superlative synthetic forms are not part of the paradigm of original adjectives but are different lexical items, since not all qualitative adjectives have them. A few adjectives have irregular forms that are declined like ordinary adjectives: 'big' — 'bigger', 'good' — 'better'. Most synthetically derived comparative forms are derived by adding or to the adjective stem: 'red' — 'more red'; distinguishing such adjectives from the comparative adverbs whose forms they share is at best difficult, if not impossible. Superlative synthetic forms are derived by adding suffix or and additionally sometimes prefix , or using a special comparative form with наи-: 'kind' — 'the kindest', 'big' — 'the biggest'.

Another method of indicating comparison uses analytical forms with adverbs 'more' / 'less' and 'most' / 'most' / 'least': 'kind' — 'kinder' — 'the kindest'. This pattern is rarely used if special comparative forms exist.

Possessive adjectives

Possessive adjectives are used in Russian to a lesser extent than in most other Slavic languages, but are still in use. They answer the questions (whose?) and denote only animated possessors. Alternative for possessive adjectives are possessive genitives which are used much more commonly. There are three suffixes to form them: , and .

Suffix is used to form adjective from a word denoting single human which is masculine and ends on consonant; selection depends on if the stem hard or soft. Suffix is similar but is attached to feminine words or masculine ending in . Both types are more common in spoken language than in literary (though being acceptable in both styles) and generally are forms of kinship terms, given names and their diminutives: — 'mom's', — 'father's', — 'Sasha's' /for diminutives from both Alexandr and Alexandra/. Words of this type also are common as Russian surnames, like (derived from 'gun' which used to be a nickname).

Adjectives on and are declined via mixed declension: some of their forms are nominal, some are adjectival, and some are ambivalent.

Adjectives on (speaking about suffix, not case ending; before vowels, this suffix deceases to single sound and is written as ) are used for deriving adjectives mostly from animal species (in Old East Slavic, this suffix derived possessive adjectives from plural possessors): 'fox' — 'of a fox', 'likely for a fox'. Declension of such adjectives is nominal in nominative and accusative (except masculine and plural animated accusative) and adjectival for other forms.

There exist many stable expressions which include possessive adjectives following either of the two declensions shown above: (Noah's ark, from "Noah"), ( Euclidean geometry, from "Euclides"), (the Field of Mars), (the Augean stables, from "Augeas"), (a wolfish appetite, from "wolf"), (crocodile tears, from "crocodile"), (every God-given day, from "God"), etc. Notice how the latter two differ from the general rule: has ending as if a crocodile were a male human, and has ending as if God is treated as an animal or (in Old Russian) a crowd (perhaps, symbolizing Holy Trinity).

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

* Russian is subject to T-V distinction. The respectful form of the singular ''you'' is the same as the plural form. It begins with a capital letter: , , etc. in following situations: personal letters and official papers (addressee is definite), and questionnaires (addressee is indefinite), otherwise it begins with minuscule. Compare the distinction between ''du'' and ''Sie'' in German or ''tu'' and ''vous'' in French.
* When a preposition is used directly before a 3rd-person pronoun in oblique cases, is prefixed: (read: ), , etc. Because the prepositional case always occurs after a preposition, the third person prepositional always starts with an .
* Like adjectives and numerals, letter (g) in genitive and accusative form is pronounced as (v) .

Demonstrative pronouns

Possessive adjectives and pronouns

Unlike English, Russian uses the same form for a possessive adjective and the corresponding possessive pronoun. In Russian grammar they are called possessive pronouns (compare with possessive adjectives like Peter's = above). The following rules apply:
* Possessive pronouns agree with possessed noun in case, gender, and number: '' (plural)'' "Where are my glasses?"; '' (feminine accusative)'' Have you seen my daughter?, even if her father is talking. As in English, they also depend on the person and number of the possessor.
* The reflexive pronoun is used when the possessor is the subject of the clause, whatever the person, gender, and number of that subject.
* In literary Russian non-reflexive pronouns are not used for the 3rd person; the genitive of the personal pronoun is used instead: (masc./neut. sing. possessor), (fem. sing. possessor) and (pl. possessor). Unlike other genitives used with a possessive meaning, in modern Russian these words are usually placed before the object of possession. In colloquial speech, however, sometimes "adjectived" forms are used: (masc./neut. sing. possessor, rare), (pl. possessor); they are declined as adjectives.
* Example of the difference between reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns:
** ''“Он лю́бит свою́ жену́ = He loves his (own) wife”'';
** ''“Он лю́бит его́ жену́ = He loves his (someone else's) wife”'' (for literary Russian);
** ''“Он лю́бит его́ = He loves him/it”''.
* Unlike Latin where a similar rule applies for the 3rd person only, Russian accepts using reflexives for all persons:
** ''“Я люблю́ свою́ жену́ = I love my wife”'';
** ''“Я люблю́ себя́ = I love myself”''.
*The ending is pronounced as .

Interrogative pronouns

* The ending is pronounced as .

Numerals

Russian has several main classes of numerals (): cardinal, ordinal, collective, and fractional constructions. It also has other types of words, relative to numbers:
*multiplicative adjectives and compound nouns: – single (sole, unique), – double, – quadrupled, – three-times (also as repetition adjective), – five-cylinder; – monotony, – triplicity, – heptathlon;
*multiplicative verbs: – triple, – halve (imp./perf. with/without - suffix);
*multiplicative adverbs: – doubly, – five times (for compound adverbs: – 5 times faster), – half as;
*collective and repetition adverbs: – three together; – four times (with a verb for repeated action or a noun for repeatedly acquired state or title);
*two interrogative and negative adverbs: – how much/many?; – none (at all);
*counting-system, ordinal and partitive adjectives: – binary, – hexadecimal; – primary; () – three-sided (tripartite);
*two dual numerals: – both (masculine/neuter), – both (feminine); but no single word for "neither";
*numeric-pronominal, indefinite quantity words: , – some, as much; – few; – (not) much/many; – (not a) little; and are also used for compound words: – small significance, – multilevel, – vaguely (lit.: little clear);
*nouns for a number itself or an object defined by it (symbol, playing cards, banknote, transport route, etc.): – number "1", unit; – number "500" (all feminine); noun for masculine (zero) is .
*multiple loaned numerals (also used as prefixes and first roots for compound words) from Greek, Latin and (for musical terminology) Italian;
Here are the numerals from 0 to 10:

Declension of cardinal numerals

Different Russian numerals have very different types of declension. The word (one) is declined by number, gender (in the singular), and case. The word (two) is declined by gender and case, all other numbers have only case to decline by. The words for 50, 60, 70, 80, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 are unique for Russian, as they decline not only with ending in their end, but also with part of word in their middle (since they are originally composed from two words): Nom. (50) – Gen. etc. (compare – "five tens").

Compound number phrases are created without any unions: "153 fishes". All numerals are declined concurrently, albeit not always in the spoken language. If numeral is in Nominative or Accusative, ending of the noun is defined by the last numeral word (the least order, see examples below), but this may not be true for an adjective attached to this noun.

Most numbers ending with "1" (in any gender: , , ) require Nominative singular for a noun: (21 cars), (151 people). Most numbers ending with "2", "3", "4" (, , ) require Genitive singular: (3 dogs), (42 windows). All other numbers (including 0 and those ending with it) require Genitive plural: (5 apples), (10 rubles). Genitive plural is also used for numbers ending with 11 to 14 and with inexact numerals: (111 meters); (many houses). Nominative plural is used only without numerals: (these houses); cf. (3 houses; G. sg.). These rules apply only for integer numbers. For rational numbers see below.

In oblique cases, noun and number take both this case, except that the numbers ending with "thousand", "million", "billion" etc. (nouns: (f.), (m.), (m.)) in singular or in plural are regarded as nouns and always require Genitive case in plural: (Instr.) (Gen.); cf. and (all Instr.). Initial (leftmost) numeral "1" can be omitted in combinations ( – 1001 nights), , etc.

Nouns ("approximately 100", f.) and ("pair", f.) can be declined and can form compound numerals: (≈300), (5 pair of socks). Approximate numbers are colloquially formed by reversing word order, exchanging numeral and noun: (≈3 minutes). Ranges (hyphenated) are also possible: (5–6 days), (probably 5–6 days). The word (minus) declines if standalone, but does not for negative numbers: – minus three degrees (wrong: *); however: – three minuses.

Dative, Instrumental and Prepositional cases for "zero" more often use root instead of . The numbers from 11 to 19 are: оди́ннадцать, двена́дцать, трина́дцать, четы́рнадцать, пятна́дцать, шестна́дцать, семна́дцать, восемна́дцать, девятна́дцать. They decline in the same way as 20 (два́дцать).

For numbers above 1,000 Russian uses a modified short scale with the following loanwords: миллио́н (10⁶, million; as for both long and short scales), миллиа́рд (10⁹, milliard; as for long scale – an exception), триллио́н (10¹², trillion), квадриллио́н (10¹⁵, quadrillion), квинтиллио́н (10¹⁸, quintillion), etc. (continued as short scale). They decline in the same way as миллио́н. Russian uses words (billion) and numerals with -ard endings only in historical texts or literal translations. Also, ( billiard) is a noun meaning a cue sport.

Note for superscript case notations: small letters denote singular forms, capitals denote plural. is masculine (important for "51"); both and are inanimate (important for Accusative). Blue digits are indicatives of case endings, marked by blue letters.

Collective numerals

Collective numerals (russian: собира́тельные числи́тельные) are used in Russian (and many other Slavic languages) instead of usual cardinal ones in specific lexical and semantic situations. Russian collective numerals are different from the cardinal numerals in that the former emphasize ‘the totality’ or ‘the aggregate as a whole’, while the latter – ‘the
individuated quantity’. Only numerals from 2 () to 7 () are actively used nowadays, while 8 to 10 are seldom used and 11–13 are not normative; word (both) is also considered to be collective numeral. In nominative and accusative, they always force the noun into genitive plural form (while their own accusative form is dependent from animacy of the noun): . (Three friends went hunting ogether I see two men ogether I see two sleighs ogether) These numerals are seldom used in oblique cases, especially instrumental. A brief table of usage situations follows:

Dobrushina and Panteleeva (2008), having analyzed usage of in a Russian corpus, summarize cases of usage of collective numerals in the following common rules:
# Collective numerals denote number of persons likely to have collective behaviour, i.e., existence in groups, not one by one: 'militants', 'inhabitants', 'passengers', 'soldiers'.
# Collective numbers are used while denoting several persons to emphasize unity, cohesion of this group.
# Contexts of nominal groups with collective numerals have properties showing their individualization and dedication: referentness, empathy, definiteness; they are unlikely to be out of focus.

Ordinal numerals

Ordinal numbers have grammatically no differences with adjectives. 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. (153,000-th), while the next is (153,001-st). In the latter example, only the last word is declined with noun.

Fractions

Fractions are formed as: (how much parts), expressed by cardinal number in case of the phrase, plus (of how numerous parts), expressed by ordinal number; the construction is formed as like it were related to word "part" (grammatically feminine), which is usually omitted. Noun to such construction always comes in Genitive single, also as like it belonged to word часть: "92/50 tons". If an integer precedes a fraction, it is bound to it usually with the conjunction , while the noun remains in Genitive: "2 3/8 turns" ( is masculine, so the numeral is , not *).

Fractions 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 have proper names (nouns): and , which are used instead of ordinal numbers. They are also often added with preposition , while form of noun appears to be related to the integer part rather than to the fraction: nstr. en."10 1/4 turns". Prefixes (with Genitive) and (with Nominative) are used for "half" of something: (half of a lemon), полчаса́ (half an hour; but: ); (half moon, crescent). Words with are not declined, and there is a set of rules for writing with or without dash.

For "1 1/2" there is a special word (feminine полторы́; in oblique cases полу́тора; requires Genitive): – 3/2 apples. It can be used with larger numbers ( – 1 500, – 1 500 000) and, for approximate values, with smaller numbers ( – ≈15, – ≈150). There was also now-outdated form for exactly 150. As with other single-word numerals, it's possible to form nouns and multiplicative adjectives, associated with "1.5": ( old truck with 1.5 tonnes of payload capacity), (1.5 liter plastic bottle for beverage); (something of 150% amount). Also (colloquially): ' "almost nobody" ''(lit. one and a half men)''.

To read decimal fractions,In Russian, the comma is used as the decimal separator. convert them to simple ones: 2,71828 = 2+71828/100000 . After integer in such cases is often used word (substantiated adjective "full, integer", which also refers to omitted word and thus is feminine): 3,14 – () (union is often omitted); word can appear also in naming non-decimal simple fractions: 2 3/8 – . Zero before comma is often read: 0,01 = 0+1/100 – (shortly: ). Informally, decimal fractional part can be read more conveniently as sequence of simple digits and numbers: . Same method is used to read long numerals unrelated to a noun (phone numbers, address indexes, etc.), grouping two or three digits: 123406 – (forced added to avoid missing digit).

Count form

Russian also has so-called "count form" ( 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): (8 bits; not *), (16 bytes), (220 volts), (5 kilograms; optional). But: (amount of bytes), (get rid of excess kilograms).

Count form also exists for paucal numbers (1.5, 2, 3 and 4); usually it coincides with genitive singular, but has notable exceptions with stressed endings: (2 hours), but (middle of an hour); (22 balls), but (volume of the ball); (3 rows/lines), but (step out of the line); (4 steps), but (half a step). (half an hour) is additional exception; other nouns with prefix does not have stressed ending.

A few nouns have unrelated suppletive genitive plural forms: , but (years); , but (people; optional). Count forms for adjectives and nouns with adjectival declension after numerals require genitive plural and nominative plural: (G. pl.) (G. sg.) "2 best players"; (N. pl.) (N. pl.) lit. "3 green straight lines", but (G. pl.) (G. pl.) (G. sg.) lit. "3 green straight strokes".

Notes

References

{{Russian language

declension
Declension