Memorizing Russian Cases Endings with Memory Palaces

Russian has 6 grammatical cases:

• N nominative: indicates the subject of the sentence;
• G genitive: refers to things (or living beings) belonging to other things;
• D dative: indicates the indirect object of a verb;
• A accusative: indicates the direct object of a verb;
• P prepositional: always used with a preposition;
• I instrumental: indicates how something is done.

Unfortunately, in Russian, each case has a different ending, and it varies according to gender (masculine, feminine or neuter), number (singular or plural), animation (animate or inanimate), and articulation (soft or hard ending). So they can be a pain to memorize. 

After struggling to memorize the endings, we can go to this post, in which Esperanto correlatives could be remembered using memory palaces and a number system, and decide to assign a place to each one of the cases:

N: registry office (as it makes us think about name)

G: arabic show (makes us think about genius)

D: birthday party (makes us think about "dar" - to hand over, in Spanish)

A: court (makes us think about being accused)

P: gym (makes us think about preparing)

L: field (makes us think about locus)

I: concert (makes us think about instrumental concerts)

We are going to use the following version of the Major System:

Numeral	Associated Consonants/ A	Mnemonic
0	s, z, soft c	z is the first letter of zero. The other letters have a similar sound.
1	t, d	d & t have one downstroke and sound similar (some variant systems include "th")
2	n	n has two downstrokes and looks something like "2" on its side
3	m	M has three downstrokes and looks like a 3 on its side
4	r	last letter of four, also 4 and R are almost mirror images of each other
5	l	L is the Roman Numeral for 50
6	sh, soft ch, j, soft g, zh	a script j has a lower loop / g is almost a 6 flipped over
7	k, hard c, hard g, hard ch, q, qu	capital K "contains" two sevens
8	f, v	script f resembles a figure-8. V sounds similar. (some variant systems include th)
9	p, b	p is a mirror-image 9. b sounds similar and resembles a 9 rolled around
Unassigned	w,h,y

Together with the following vowel scheme:

	Number	Shape
no vowel (∅)	0	No Sign
A	1	Geometry compass
E	2	Comb
I	3	Candle
O	4	Doughnut
U	5	Horseshoe

And in order to make things even easier, I decided to memorize the only the cases nominative, genitive, dative and accusative, not of Russian directly, but instead of a simplified auxiliary language, similar to Russian and other slavic languages, called Interslavic. Also, the patterns of soft and hard consonants are similar, so we can ignore it.

Then, we can use the initials of gender, number and animation to create the triggers using the system we have just built. To the resulting number, we can go back and use the major system and link an object.

 

(Masculine Singular) + (Animate) => (3+0) (1) => 31: MeaT

(Masculine Singular) + (Inanimate) => (3+0)(3) => 33: MoM

(Masculine Plural) + (Animate) => (3+9) (1) => (12-10)1 => 21: NeT

(Masculine Plural) + (Animate) => (3+9) (3) => (12-10)3 => 23: eNeMy

(Feminine Singular) + (Animate) => (8+0) (1) => 81: FooT

(Feminine Singular) + (Inanimate) => (8+0)(3) => 83: FoaM

(Feminine Plural) + (Animate) => (8+9) (1) => (17-10)1 => 71: CaT

(Feminine Plural) + (Animate) => (8+9) (3) => (17-10)3 => 73: CoMb

[If we use Neuter, we'll have the number 21 again in the next line, but we can use Unassigned]

(Unassigned Singular) + (Animate) => (5+0) (1) => 51: LighT

(Unassigned Singular) + (Inanimate) => (5+0)(3) => 53: LiMo

(Unassigned Plural) + (Animate) => (5+9) (1) => (14-10)1 => 41: RaDio

(Unassigned Plural) + (Animate) => (5+9) (3) => (14-10)3 => 43: aRM

Exemple: Masculine Singular/Plural + Animate (=>MeaT/MoM), using the word "brat" (a brother).

	sg.	pl.
N	brat-∅	brat-i
G	brat-a	brat-ov
D	brat-u	brat-am
A	brat-a	brat-i

Mnemonics:

N singular: a humanoid MeaT (Masculine Singular Animate) is at the Registry Office (Nominative), but sees a No Sign (∅ - no vowel), and goes back home.

N plural: your MoM is at the Registry Office. She is dead, and came as a ghost, that's why she's brought a candle (I): she wants her own death certificate.

G singular: a humanoid MeaT is doing belly dance in an Arabic Show. It is doing some crazy turns - that's what they call compass (A) dance.

G plural: your MoM sees you dancing in an Arabic Show. Surprised, she throws a doughnut (O) at you, but you just eat it.

D singular: if someone gives you MeaT in a Birthday Party, you should throw a horseshoe (U) in his/her face.

D plural: your MoM is at your Birthday Party. She has brought a compass (A) to puncture the ballons.

A singular: a bull (Meat) is at the Court. He is being accused of having punctured a bullfighter like a compass (A) does with a paper.

A plural: your Mom is at the Court with a candle (I). Maybe she has got your house on fire with it.

This way we can remember at least the first vowel in the ending.

Visit this page to get the other endings in Interslavic. The site even tells us some other ways to make memorization easier:

1. There are basically two fundamental patterns for each gender: hard one and soft one. The vowel "o" from the hard patterns corresponds to the vowel "e" from the soft patters. This means that you will find a variety of hard-soft pairs of endings of the same cases as -om/-em, -oj/-ej, -ov/-ev, for example.
2. The singular dative and singular locative of the same pattern have the same endings.
3. The singular dative and singular locative of masculine hard and soft patterns and neuter hard and soft patterns have only one endings -u.
4. In all patterns and all genders, the plural dative has -(j)am, the plural locative has -(j)ah and the plural instrumental has -(j)ami.
5. In all patterns and all genders, the dual genitive together with the dual locative has -(j)u and the dual dative together with the dual instrumental has -(j)ama.
6. The plural genitive (-') is identical for the feminine and the neuter patterns.  
7.  In the same feminine and neutral pattern, the singular genitive is identical to the plural nominative as well as the singular dative is identical to the dual nominative.

You can create your own stories, the pattern is simple: trigger (indicates gender and animation) + place (indicates the case) + vowel shape (indicates the ending).