Who owns what??

In our series of one-sentence theatre plays, we have now come to the role of genitive. This is perhaps one of the easier for me, coming from Swedish and English. That’s the word we use to describe that someone owns something. So, we would say things like “the man’s car” or “the bear’s breakfast”. That’s how it works in Ukrainian too.

So, if I were to say “the man’s house”, I could say “будинок чоловіка” (budynok cholovika). Man is normally чоловік (cholovika), but just as I write man’s instead of man, I use чоловіка instead of чоловік. Nothing strange there.

However…

Ukrainian uses this case in more.. well.. cases, than for instance English or Swedish.

• Being part of something
  • If I were to say “the windows of the house”, house would also be genetive. House is “будинок” (budynok), and genitive is будинку (budynku). “The windows of the house” would then be “вікна будинку” (vikna budynku).
• Some prepositions
  • For instance, when you are near something, that would also be genetive. Think if it as being “in the proximity of..”
  • Let’s look at the phrase “I am near the house”.
    • The words one by one:
      • I = Я (ya)
      • Near = біля (bilya)
      • House = будинок (in nominative, base form)
    • But, since we are in the proximity of the house, we use genitive.
    • The resulting sentence is Я біля будинку (since будинку is the genitive of будинок)
• Absence of, negations
  • Words that deal with absence or negations are also often genitive.
  • “I don’t have a house” would be “Я не маю будинку” (YA ne mayu budynku). Again, it’s будинку instead of будинок. And “не маю” is “don’t have”.
• Some amounts
  • And this is perhaps one of the more confusing ones, at least for me. When counting something, for some numbers, the plural genitive is used.
  • The plural of house is (confusingly enough) будинку. There are some words whose plural and genitive singular are the same. So, if we count houses, we would say
    • Один будинок (one house)
    • два будинки (two houses)
    • Три будинки (three houses)
    • чотири будинки (four houses)
    • п’ять будинків (five hou..what???)
  • When we get to five or more, we actually change to genitive plural. If I understand it correctly, the technical rule is:
    • When the last digit is 1,2,3 or 4, regular plural is used, but 0 and 5-9 uses genitive plural.
      • However, if the last TWO digits are 11, 12, 13 or 14, genitive plural is also used.

So, yes.. this can be a bit confusing at times..