Master Table of Case Endings

This is the page you will return to constantly. Most resources scatter case endings across dozens of lessons; here they are in one view, so you can scan the full system at a glance. How to read it: find your noun's column by its gender and how the nominative singular ends (consonant, -ь, -й, -о, -е, -ие, -а, -я, -ия, or feminine -ь), then read down the rows for each case. Hard stems and soft stems sit in separate columns because they take parallel ending-sets with paired vowels — the background to that split is on hard vs soft stems. Two things rewrite the raw endings: the seven-letter spelling rule and the animacy override, both flagged below.

Two rules that override the raw endings

Before the tables, internalize the two filters that bend them — otherwise the table will look "wrong" against real words.

The seven-letter (hushing/velar) spelling rule. After the seven consonants к, г, х, ж, ш, щ, ч, you cannot write -ы; it becomes -и. So the genitive singular of кни́га is the "-ы slot," but because г precedes it, it is spelled кни́ги, never *кни́гы. The ending is the same; only the letter changes. (Full detail: the seven-letter rule.)

The animacy override in the accusative. The accusative has almost no endings of its own — it borrows. For inanimate nouns the accusative copies the nominative; for animate nouns (people, animals) it copies the genitive. This bites in the masculine singular and in the plural of all genders. In the tables the accusative row shows this as "= Nom. / = Gen." See the animacy rule.

Singular endings

Three things to lock in from the singular table:

• The -ия/-ие/-ий group takes -ии in both dative and prepositional (ле́кции, зда́нии) — where ordinary soft stems have -е (неде́ле, мо́ре). This is the most-missed singular rule.
• The feminine -ь noun (ночь) is the leanest: it shows only ночь (nom./acc.), но́чи (gen./dat./prep.), and the instrumental но́чью.
• геро́й is animate, so its accusative is геро́я (= genitive); стол and слова́рь shown here as inanimate copy the nominative.

Plural endings

The plural cuts across the three declensions: the dative, instrumental, and prepositional plural endings are nearly uniform (-ам/-ям, -ами/-ями, -ах/-ях for everyone), which is a gift. The work is concentrated in the nominative and — above all — the genitive plural, the hardest column in the language.

The genitive plural: the column that separates good tables from useless ones

Every other plural ending is predictable; the genitive plural is where Russian hides its real difficulty. The endings sort into three families by stem type:

The headline pattern: masculine nouns add a syllable (-ов/-ев/-ей), while feminine -а and neuter -о nouns subtract one — they end in a bare consonant cluster, and Russian often slips in a "fleeting vowel" (-о- or -е-) to make that cluster pronounceable: окно́ → о́кон, де́вочка → де́вочек, письмо́ → пи́сем. That insertion is its own topic on fleeting vowels.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• This is the consolidated reference: pick a column by gender and nominative-singular ending, read down for each case, and apply the two filters.
• Seven-letter rule: after к г х ж ш щ ч, the -ы ending is spelled -и (кни́ги, not *кни́гы).
• Animacy override (accusative): inanimate Acc = Nom (стол, окно́), animate Acc = Gen (геро́я) — in the masc. singular and all plurals.
• The -ия/-ие/-ий group takes -ии in dative and prepositional singular (ле́кции, зда́нии).
• The plural is largely uniform in dat./instr./prep. (-ам/-ям, -ами/-ями, -ах/-ях); the real work is the genitive plural: masculine adds -ов/-ев/-ей, feminine -а and neuter -о take a zero ending (often with a fleeting vowel), and the -и- group takes -ий.