Russian grammar · the case system
The dative case in Russian
кому? чему? Recipient, indirect object
The dative marks the receiver: the person something is given, said, shown or sent to. It also carries age and those very Russian impersonal states where the feeler is dative and the feeling just happens to them.
Aurélien CuvelierAug 10, 2026The endings, with a declined example per ending
| Masculine | -у / -ю | столу · музею · словарю |
|---|---|---|
| Feminine | -е / -и | сестре · неделе |
| Neuter | -у / -ю | окну · морю |
| Plural | -ам / -ям | столам · словарям · окнам |
The personal pronouns in this case
| я | мне |
|---|---|
| ты | тебе |
| он | ему |
| она | ей |
| оно | ему |
| мы | нам |
| вы | вам |
| они | им |
When to use it
The recipient
After verbs of giving and telling: дать другу (give to a friend), звонить маме (call mum).
With к and по
к врачу (to the doctor's), по телефону (by phone), по городу (around the city).
Age
The person having the age is dative: мне двадцать лет (I am twenty).
Impersonal states
мне холодно (I am cold), ей нужно работать (she needs to work): the experiencer stands in the dative.
In a real sentence
Мама купила сыну велосипед. Mum bought her son a bicycle.
Watch out
Нравиться flips the sentence English speakers expect: the liked thing is the subject and the liker is dative. Мне нравится эта книга is literally to-me pleases this book. Age works the same way: Мне двадцать лет, to me twenty years. The dative person is the experiencer, not the actor.
The other cases
- The nominative case in Russian
- The genitive case in Russian
- The accusative case in Russian
- The instrumental case in Russian
- The prepositional case in Russian
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Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck
Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck, the app that teaches Russian and French words in context. Each course follows the official proficiency word lists and a frequency corpus for its language, and every word comes with real, annotated example sentences.
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