Russian Declension Tool - Decline Any Noun

How Russian declension works

A Russian noun is not one fixed word - it changes its ending to show its job in the sentence. That change is called declension, and there are twelve forms to know for each noun: six cases in the singular and the same six in the plural. The cases are nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional.

Two properties of the noun decide which endings it takes. The first is gender - masculine, feminine or neuter - which you can usually read straight off the dictionary form: a bare consonant is normally masculine, -а/-я is normally feminine, -о/-е is normally neuter, and -ь nouns go either way and must be learned. The second is whether the stem is hard or soft. Soft stems (ending in -ь, -й or a soft vowel) simply swap each hard ending for its soft twin: -а becomes -я, -о becomes -е, -ом becomes -ем, and so on.

For the complete endings tables - every case, every gender, hard and soft - see our full guide to the Russian cases. This tool is the fast, hands-on companion: type a noun, hear it, and see the whole table at a glance.

A few rules that explain most endings

One spelling rule does a lot of heavy lifting: after к, г, х, ж, ч, ш, щ you write -и instead of -ы (so книга -> книги in the genitive, not книгы). It is behind many endings that look "wrong" at first.

The animacy rule shapes the accusative. For masculine nouns and all plurals, the accusative is identical to the nominative for inanimate things (стол -> стол) but identical to the genitive for animate ones - people and animals (брат -> брата, друзья -> друзей). Feminine -а/-я nouns have their own accusative ending (-у/-ю), and feminine -ь nouns and neuter nouns do not change in the accusative singular.

Finally, a small group of nouns is irregular and worth learning as fixed forms: мать and дочь expand their stem (мать -> матери, дочери); the neuter -мя nouns имя and время expand too (имя -> имени, имена); and человек has the suppletive plural люди. The tool shows all of these correctly.

Worked examples from the tool

стол (masculine, hard, inanimate): nominative стол, genitive стола, dative столу, accusative стол (= nominative, because it is inanimate), instrumental столом, prepositional (о) столе. Plural: столы, столов, столам, столы, столами, (о) столах.

книга (feminine, hard): nominative книга, genitive книги (the -и spelling rule after г), dative книге, accusative книгу, instrumental книгой, prepositional (о) книге. Genitive plural drops to the bare stem: книг.

мать (feminine, irregular): the stem expands to матер- in every case but the nominative and accusative singular: матери, матери, мать, матерью, (о) матери. It is animate, so the accusative plural equals the genitive plural (матерей).

время (neuter, irregular -мя): времени, времени, время, временем, (о) времени in the singular; the plural is времена, времён, временам, and so on. One of only ten -мя nouns, all of which expand the stem to -ен-.