Duo Russian Grammar

61) Numbers 2

Ordinal numbers

Ordinal numbers decline exactly like adjectives. Fortunately, only the last word is declined, others are like in cardinal numbers. And no and's:

  • 1904th = ты́сяча девятьсо́т четвёртый
  • 2015th = две ты́сячи пятна́дцатый
  • in 2015th = в две ты́сячи пятна́дцатом
Actually, «третий» declines a bit differently, similar to "animal-possessives" (eg. кошачий): третий, третья, третье, третьи / третьего, третьей . . . Note the Ь.

Declension of numbers

In Russian, tens and hundreds are compound words with both parts declining («сто» has an unusual pattern):

  • пять·деся́т (50) → о пяти́·десяти кни́гах
  • шесть·деся́т (60) → за шестью́·десятью дверьми
  • две́·сти (200) → Двум·ста́м ма́льчикам пришли́ пи́сьма
(you might recall that numbers 5-20 and also 30, 50,60,70,80 decline just like a feminine noun, eg. «кровать»)

Oblique cases of numbers are madness even for native speakers, so they usually either make mistakes, or think their way around such complicated forms. After all, no one makes you use convoluted sentence structure IRL.

Consequently, we are not spending much time on these forms.

Use of adjectives with numbers

In Nominative expressions like "2/3/4 big cats" the agreement of the adjective may not match the noun.

For masculine and neuter nouns, you use the adjective in Genitive plural. For feminine nouns, there is variation. Typically, Nominative plural is preferred:

  • На столе две большие ложки.
  • Две молодые женщины ждут ответа.

However, if Gen.sg is different from Nom.plural (руки́-ру́ки) or if the verb is in singular — Genitive plural is better:

  • У меня есть старший брат и три младших сестры.
  • На столе было три больших тарелки.

If the adjective modfies the whole number phrase, only the Nominative is used: каждые три дня, долгие две недели, мои любимые четыре года.