Genitiv

The genitive (родовий відмінок, questions кого? чого? "of whom? of what?") is the most frequent case after the nominative. It covers English "of" and "'s", and also several meanings English expresses with no special form at all: absence, quantity and dates.

What it does

• Possession, "of": книга брата "my brother's book", центр міста "the city centre", вулиці Львова "the streets of Lviv". The owner comes after the thing owned, the reverse of English "'s".
• Absence, after немає and без: У мене немає часу. "I don't have time." Кава без цукру "coffee without sugar".
• Quantity, after 5 and above and after багато "a lot", мало "little", скільки "how much": п'ять днів, багато людей "a lot of people", склянка води "a glass of water".
• Dates: першого травня "on the first of May", двадцять четвертого серпня "on the 24th of August", Independence Day.
• Many prepositions: з "from", до "to", біля "near", після "after", для "for": з Києва "from Kyiv", до Одеси "to Odesa", після обіду "after lunch".

Endings in the singular

The masculine choice between -а and -у is the hardest part of the case, even for Ukrainians writing formally. Useful tendencies: people and animals take -а/-я (брата, кота); substances and abstract ideas mostly take -у/-ю (цукру, часу, борщу, сміху "of laughter"); for objects and places it varies (стола "of the table", but будинку "of the building", лісу "of the forest"). Learn the genitive of a masculine noun when you learn the noun; dictionaries give it.

Negation

After a negated verb, the object can go into the genitive: Я не п'ю кави. "I don't drink coffee." In modern speech the accusative is also common and correct here: Я не п'ю каву. The genitive sounds more bookish or more emphatic ("not a drop"). After немає, however, the genitive is required: немає кави.

English speakers most often forget the genitive in the "absence" and "quantity" uses, because English uses no "of" there: "I have no time" is немає часу, "a lot of people" багато людей, "five days" п'ять днів.