Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to form and use the accusative case to mark direct objects.

Lesson Explanation

Building on the case overview from the previous lesson, the accusative case marks the direct object of a sentence — what/whom the verb’s action is directed at: Я читаю книгу. (I read a book — “книгу” in the accusative.)

A genuinely important, distinctive detail: the accusative endings differ sharply by gender, and — unlike most other cases — masculine INANIMATE nouns don’t change at all from the nominative, while masculine ANIMATE nouns (people, animals) genuinely do change: Я вижу стол. (I see a table — “стол” unchanged, inanimate) versus Я вижу студента. (I see a student — “студента,” changed, animate).

Feminine nouns ending in -а change to -у: книга → книгу. Feminine nouns ending in -я change to -ю: неделя → неделю. Neuter nouns don’t change at all in the accusative, matching the nominative exactly: окно stays окно.

Adjectives describing an accusative noun must also change to agree, following the same animate/inanimate split for masculine forms — a genuinely important compounding of the two agreement systems (case and gender/number, from Part 1, Lesson 6) that will recur with every case covered from here forward: Я вижу новый стол. (inanimate, adjective unchanged) versus Я вижу нового студента. (animate, adjective changes to “-ого”).

Practice Questions