A Question

[oncelosthorizon.livejournal.com]

Hi, my name is Kelly. I'm a seventeen year old girl from Massachusetts, United States. I have a question about the difference between the genitive case of personal pronouns and possessive pronouns. First of all, what are some instances that one would use genitive pronouns such as меня, вас, etc? I am also wondering why they are different from the posessive pronouns? I'm really not quite sure what I'm trying to ask here, but if someone could explain some of this to me, I would be forever indebted :)

	Singular	Plural
1st Person	меня	нас
2nd Person	тебя	вас
3rd Person Masc.	(н)его	(н)их
3rd Person Fem.	(н)её	(н)их
3rd Person Neut.	(н)его	(н)их

Here I 'tabled-out' the first person singular possessive pronouns. I know there are many more (наш, ваш, etc.)

	Singular Masc.	Singular Fem.	Singular Neut.	Plural
Nom.	мой	моя	моё	мои
Acc	мой	мою	моё	мои
Acc. Anim.	моего			моих
Gen.	моего	моей	моего	моих
Dat.	моему	моей	моему	моих
Intsr.	моим	моей	моим	моими
Prep.	моём	моей	моём	моих

Comments

[poluzhivago.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I fully understand your question but there are some examples I see as a difficult case for non-Russian speaker.

When we want to say: I love you we say Я тебя люблю not Я ты люблю.

Another example: I have a car - У меня есть машина not Я имею машину.

Another example: This car is mine - Это моя машина

More: He fooled me - Он меня обманул

Please feel free to ask more specific questions.

[oncelosthorizon.livejournal.com]

"I have a car - У меня есть машина not Я имею машину."
-Is 'меня' the direct object in this sentence, or is it genitive?

"This car is mine - Это моя машина"
-Can 'меня' also be translated as 'of my' or 'of mine', like 'моя'?

Thanks for helping :)))

[welgar.livejournal.com]

This is the case when you can't translate Russian into English (or backwards) directly. You should remember all the things you've learnt about cases in Russian and use it in the same way with pronouns.

Genitive case is often used when talking about an object of some action. E.g., "Милиционер увидел меня" ("A police officer saw me"). Personal case is used when talking about subjects of actions: "Я посмотрел в окно" ("I looked out the window").

[poluzhivago.livejournal.com]

Sorry I'm not sure about grammar terms. "У меня есть" means "I have something belongs to me". "Моя машина" means "My car".

[oncelosthorizon.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[constpd.livejournal.com]

“Милиционер увидел меня” is not Genitive but Accusative case though they are the same in case of animate noun. Увидел (кого, что). Видеть / увидеть is a transitive verb, so it can be used with the direct object.
The direct object is always of Accusative case, not Genitive.
Nouns in the Genitive case are used without preposition only when you express lack or absence of something (У меня нет ручки. - I don’t have a pen. Мне не хватает бумаги. - I lack paper.)

[constpd.livejournal.com]

Nouns in the Genitive case are used without preposition only when you...
I am sorry, i forgot to say I was talking about inanimate nouns and pronouns.
With animate nouns and personal names the Genitive case is used in the same situations as possessive pronouns. Это машина Николая (This is Nikolay’s car). Это его машина (This is his car). In the last sentence его is possessive pronoun, not the Genitive case of “он”, simply because for personal pronouns you do have the possessive equivalents, and for nouns you don‘t.

[welgar.livejournal.com]

Indeed. You are right. Sorry for the mistake.

[noser.livejournal.com]

"У меня" is not an object, it answers the question "Where?". Anyway, forget about it, because "у

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<somebody [...] gen.>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

"У меня" is not an object, it answers the question "Where?". Anyway, forget about it, because "у <somebody in Gen.> есть <smth in Nom.>" is the Russian way of saying "<Somebody> has <something>". Just accept it as it is, because even Russian native speakers won't be able to explain why the hell.

"меня" can not be translated as "my". "меня" answers "whom?" while "my" answers "whose?".

[lollydoll.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the table!

[oncelosthorizon.livejournal.com]

That makes perfect sense to be. I guess I just needed an example of a genitive pronoun that wasn't possessive. Thanks :)

[oncelosthorizon.livejournal.com]

No problem!

[oncelosthorizon.livejournal.com]

me*

The big picture

[http://users.livejournal.com/_siberian_tiger/]

If you want to understand Russian cases, think of verbs as questions.

All of the questions can be simplified to 6 main questions.

Each case "responds" to one of these questions and is the proper form for answering these questions.
If anything is not clear, ask me more.

Nom. - "Who?"
Gen. - "There is no WHOM/WHAT?"
Dat. - "Give to WHOM/what?"
Acc. - "Accuse Whom/what?" (often forms for anim are the same as for Gen, and for inanim - the same as for Nom).
Instr. - "Get drunk with what/Fight with whom?"
Prep - "Think of whom/what?"

Also, some prepositions are used with only certain cases.

As for the posessive pronouns, they are completely different animal from the genutive case since they imply ownership of the object.