What is the Genitive case in the Russian language?

Hello, my dear Russian learner!

Cases are one of the most complicated aspects of Russian, but I’ll try to help you better understand this! 

We’ve already given a brief explanation of what cases are and how many there are in Russian. You can read it here.

As a quick reminder, a case is a grammatical category that determines the role of certain parts of speech in a sentence, expresses their relationship with each other and conveys the meaning of what is said. Something that word order often does in other languages.

A case applies to nouns, pronouns, as well as the adjectives, numerals and participles that depend on them. These parts of speech decline according to each case, which means their endings change.

The Russian language, meanwhile, has six cases. We’ve already discussed the Nominative case. And now, let’s talk about the Genitive case. 

The Genitive case answers the questions "кого?" (kogo?) and "чего?" (chego?) for nouns and pronouns. Both translated as "whom?" or "what?", depending on the context (e.g., of whom? of what?). 

For adjectives and participles, it answers the questions "какого? какой? какого? каких?" (kakogo? kakoy? kakogo? kakikh?), meaning "of which?" or "what kind of?" in masculine, feminine, neuter or plural forms. For numerals, it answers "скольких?" (skolkikh?) "of how many?"

The Genitive case denotes:

• possession or belonging (e.g., у меня есть брат – "I have a brother"; ключи от машины – "car keys"; произведение Пушкина – "Pushkin's work");
• absence or lack of something (e.g., у меня нет денег – "I have no money"; не хватает времени – "not enough time");
• a part of a whole (e.g., группа студентов – "a group of students");
• dates and time (e.g., 25 сентября – "September 25"; 2000-го года – "of the year 2000"; два часа ночи – "two o'clock at night").

The Genitive case can be used with the prepositions: с (with/from), у (by/near), от (from), до (until/to), из (from/out of), без (without), для (for), из-за (from behind/due to), из-под (from under), возле (near), около (around/about), вроде (like/similar to), среди (among), между (between), кроме (except), вокруг (around).

Below is an example of how nouns of the three declension types appear in the genitive case:

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