The Accusative Case

"Book" ("книгу") is in the accusative case, functioning here as the direct object of the verb "to give" ("дать"). The direct object means that the action of "giving" is being performed on the object in question (here "книга"). There are very few instances in English when we change the endings of words to reflect their accusative case role in a sentence.  One example is "Whom do you see on the street?"  "Whom" is the direct object version of "who" (which would probably be used more frequently in less formal English today).

Again, the direct object is the noun that receives the action in this sentence. The book is being given by Anna (who is doing the action of giving).

Usually, the direct object immediately follows the verb.

Igor hits Ivan.
Игорь бьёт Ивана.

Ivan hits Igor.
Иван бьёт Игоря.

In the first sentence, Ivan is receiving the action from Igor. In the second, Igor is on the receiving end.  The nouns change their endings to reflect their function in the sentence.  Because of Russian's system of changing endings to reflect a noun's (and adjective's!) role in a sentence, it would be just as possible to invert the players in this little skirmish without changing the overall meaning:

Igor hits Ivan = Игорь бьёт Ивана = Ивана бьёт Игорь.

Again, because of the endings, which reveal the function the word has in the sentence, it doesn't really matter what order the words are in Russian (whereas in English changing the order around usually changes the meaning of the sentence).

Anna gave Ivan the book. What did she give Ivan? What (the book) is in the accusative case and in English generally corresponds to the direct object.

The accusative case is also used after a series of prepositions, of which the largest group are those denoted some kind of motion into a location. In this group are "на" ("on/at"), "в" ("in"), "за" ("beyond"). Another major use of the accusative is in time expressions and the duration of time an action was performed ("в пятницу" -- "on Friday" is in the accusative case, as is "Сестра читала час" -- "(My) sister read for an hour."). In the table below are the standard singular, and some plural, accusative endings for nouns in Russian. The word in the middle is in the nominative, the word on the right is in the plural.

NOTE: All endings can vary between hard and soft variants depending on the consonant of the stem to which they are being attached (see the alphabet page for more information on hard and soft consonants and on the Russian spelling rules). Hence the accusative of "тётя" ("aunt") would not be "*тёту", which would suddenly change the final "т" from soft to hard, but rather "тётю", which maintains its softness.

*This rule applies only to inanimate nouns, that is, nouns which do not refer to living beings. Animate nouns follow slightly different endings (which happen to be the same as those of another case, the GENITIVE case), as summarized below:

NOTE: Remember that these endings can also vary based on hardness and softness of the stems.

ADJECTIVES

Adjectives, as would be expected, follow the same ideas as the nouns and change when they do. In the tables below is a summary of the adjective endings and how they change. Remember that spelling rules and hardness and softness constraints play a role here, too (see the Nominative Case page and the alphabet page for more information).

*These endings are the same as those of the genitive case.

Want to test yourself out? Try the accusative case exercises.

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