Russian Instrumental Case in the Plural
Practice this lesson with interactive exercises:
In this lesson, you will learn how to use the Instrumental Case in the plural in Russian.
To make things easier, I will divide this lesson into three parts:
- Plural Nouns in the Instrumental Case;
- Plural Adjectives in the Instrumental Case;
- Plural Possessive Pronouns in the Instrumental Case.
If there is any specific part of the lesson you would like to study first, you can click on the above titles and go straight to that subject.
If you don’t know yet how to use the Instrumental Case in the singular, you can check out our complete lesson about it clicking here.
The Instrumental Case of Nouns in the Plural
Plural nouns in the Instrumental Case take only two endings: ами and ями.
Let’s take a look at when we should use each of these endings.
Nouns with the ending АМИ
1) When a noun ends in а, add ми:
Note that you can click on all the underlined words to see their meanings, examples, cases and conjugations in our dictionary.
2) When a masculine noun ends in a consonant, add ами:
3) When a neuter noun ends in о, replace о with ами:
Nouns with the ending ЯМИ
1) When a noun ends in я, add ми:
2) When a neuter noun ends in е, replace е with ями:
3) When a noun ends in ь or й, replace the last letter with ями:
Note that according to Russian spelling rules, we don’t write я after ж, ч, щ and ш. Instead, we write а:
If you are not familiar with the concept of gender in Russian, you can check out our complete lesson about it clicking here.
The Instrumental Case of Adjectives in the Plural
Plural adjectives in the Instrumental Case also have only two endings: ыми and ими.
1) When the adjective ends in ые, replace ые with ыми:
- (old friends)
- (smart students)
- (colored pencils)
For example:
- (I’m talking with old friends)
- (The school is proud of the smart students)
- (She draws with colored pencils)
2) When the adjective ends in ие, replace ие with ими:
- (Russian people)
- (good people)
- (bad students)
For example:
- (Yesterday I met Russian people)
- (They turned out to be good people)
- (They were bad students)
The Instrumental Case of Possessive Pronouns in the Plural
Here is a table of possessive pronouns in the Instrumental Plural:
Here are some examples of how you can use them in a sentence:
- (I am proud of my kids)
- (The teacher wants to talk with your parents)
- (We would like to be your friends)
And that’s all for this lesson. Now you know how to use the Instrumental Case with nouns, adjectives and possessive pronouns in the plural.
