Declension of Feminine Nouns, Singular

Hard and Soft Nouns

Special Rules Pertaining to Feminine Nouns

1. The Genitive, Dative, and Prepositional of nouns ending in -ия and -ь coincide in form:  часть России, к России, в России.

2. The Dative and Prepositional of nouns ending in -a and -я coincide in form.

3. The Accusative of nouns ending in -ь coincides with the nominative.

4. Instrumental. Nouns ending in -a or -я in the nominative may have instrumental endings -ой, -ей or -ою, -ею. The last type, found chiefly in poetry, is otherwise infrequent: wave – волна: волною; storm – буря: бурею.

Hard feminine nouns with the stem ending in ж, ч, ш, щ, or ц have the ending -ой in the instrumental when the case ending is stressed: candle – свеча: свечой; sheep – овца: овцой. They have -ей in the instrumental when the ending is not stressed: (wooden) country house, dacha – дача: дачей;   bird – птица: птицей.

Nouns ending in -я in the nominative may have the stressed ending -ёй or the unstressed -ей in the instrumental: earth, land – земля: землёй;   village, country – деревня:  деревней.

Irregular Feminine Declensions

Declension of мать (mother) and дочь (daughter):

Declension of любовь (love), церковь (church), ложь (lie, falsehood), and рожь (rye):

Ложь and рожь are declined similarly, i.e., the о is dropped in the genitive, dative, and prepositional. However, the proper name Любовь retains the о:   Мы идём к Любови Петровне.