Russian grammar · the case system

The nominative case in Russian

The nominative is the form words have in the dictionary, and the case of the subject: whoever or whatever is doing the action stands in the nominative. If you can ask who does this? and the word is the answer, it is nominative.

Aurélien CuvelierAug 10, 2026

The endings, with a declined example per ending

Masculine	∅ / -й / -ь	стол · музей · словарь
Feminine	-а / -я / -ь	сестра · неделя
Neuter	-о / -е	окно · море
Plural	-ы / -и / -а	столы · словари · окна

The personal pronouns in this case

When to use it

The subject of the sentence

The doer of the action: Бабушка живёт (grandma lives), поезд идёт (the train is coming).

The dictionary form

The shape you look up and the shape flashcard apps usually stop at. It is the starting point of the whole declension, not the whole story.

Naming and pointing

After это in sentences like Это мой брат (this is my brother), the named thing stays nominative.

In a real sentence

Grandma lives in Moscow.

Watch out

Not every is-sentence keeps the nominative. With стать and with быть in the past or future, the predicate slides into the instrumental: Он стал врачом, he became a doctor. The nominative's territory ends exactly where becoming begins.

The other cases

All six cases on one page, with the full chart ›The Russian grammar map: where the cases fit in the whole system ›Download this chart as a free printable PDF (A4) ›

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Written by

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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