The genitive case is one of the more complex cases in Latvian. Two of its
uses, [possession](../2010/06/possession/) and
[prepositions](http://learninglatvian.rozentali.com/2010/06/prepositions/),
have already been discussed elsewhere on this blog.

I'll be summarizing what's in those two entries, but you should definitely go
and read at least the entry on possession for the in-depth explanation, as
it's the most common use of this case.

As always, every case has to answer to a question. **Genitive answers to "
_Kā?_ "** which means **whose**. It can also mean _how_ but since nouns can't
easily answer that question, so it doesn't apply.

Often you'll see **kāds/kāda** or **_what kind of_** being answered with a
genitive response, even though it's not the question for the case. This is
because sometimes genitive nouns are used like adjectives just like in
English.

Basically, the **genitive is used where we could expect to see " _of_ " or "
_' s_"**.

## Possession

We use the possessive all the time in English - Mary's book or John's house.
Latvian works fairly similarly - the **possessor will always precede the
possessed**. (May not be true in poetry.)

What's also neat is that **4th, 5th and 6th singular genitive nouns end in
-s** , just like in English. No apostrophes here though.

The **possessor will always be in the genitive** case and the object being
possessed will be in the case required by the sentence structure.

Let's look at an example:

Tā ir Marijas grāmata. -- That is Marija's book.

As you can see, tā and grāmata are both nominative. This is because this
sentence is a [predicate
nominative](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Predicate_nominative).
I think of these type of sentences like an equation. You have a nominative
noun on each side with a form of _to be_ in the middle acting as an equals
sign. The two nouns are equivalent to each other and the sentence is balanced.

In this example, _that_ is a _book_ or, as an equation: that = book. Whose
book? Marija's.

## Other Uses

_All street names are in genitive._ You could think of this as "street of
[name]", for example.

Mēs dzīvojam Dzintaru ielā. -- _We live on Dzintaru street._

Similarly, anywhere we could conceivably construct a _phrase using "of"_, the
_genitive is probably the right case_ for the job, even if you wouldn't
ordinarily use it when speaking. This is where the genitive nouns seem to work
like adjectives.

Kāda ir jūsu darba adrese? -- What is your work address?

Technically, we could construct this as "What is the address of your work?" So
work is in genitive.

As for why kāda instead of kā, it is because, in this case, work is pretty
close to being an adjective rather than a noun. [To translate it so it makes
sense in English, we use the simpler what as well. This seems to happen a lot
with kāds/kāda questions.]

Let's look at what happens when we use the two to ask about the address.

Kāda adrese? Darba. -- What type of address? Work.

Kā adrese? Marijas. -- Whose address? Marija's.

Even though the answers are both in genitive, asking kā or kāda makes a
difference in the information you receive back.

One last note on describing an [x] of [y]…

Viņš dzer ābolu sulu. -- He drinks apple juice.

Here again, we could say "the juice of apples" so apple is in genitive. Juice
is the direct object of drinks, so it is in the accusative.

As for why apple is in plural in Latvian, unless more information is
available, it's assumed to be plural instead of singular. It wouldn't make
sense to say _ābola sula_ because then we would be implying that the juice is
from _only_ one apple -- the apple's juice. Now, if you juiced one apple for
your husband's breakfast, you'd have that knowledge, so that's when you could
use the singular. Anything out of a box, however, is definitely plural. (Type
of apple, like gala or honeycrisp, does not affect this. The box still
contains juice from lots of apples.)

## Prepositions taking the Genitive

As you hopefully read in [Prepositions](../2010/06/prepositions/), you know
that prepositions call one of three cases: _accusative_ , _genitive_ and
_dative_. Since **_all_ prepositions take the _dative_ in the _plural_** , we
only need to worry about this for _singular_ nouns.

Luckily, of the common Latvian prepositions, only 11 of them take the
genitive. (I've listed them at the end of this section.)

The **preposition does not decline** or conjugate, it will always remain the
same. However, the **noun that follows** it (and is part of the prepositional
phrase) **must be changed to genitive**.

Let's look at how to form a prepositional phrase with _no_.

Es neesmu no Latvijas. -- _I am not from Latvia. _

_No Latvijas_ is a prepositional phrase. Since _no_ takes the genitive,
_Latvija_ must change to _Latvijas_ , the singular genitive form.

**Prepositions that take the Genitive**  
---  
**Preposition** | **Definition**  
aiz | behind, due to  
apakš | below, under  
bez | without  
kopš | since  
no | from, out of  
pēc | after, according to  
pie | next to, at (the place of)  
pirms | since, ago  
uz | on  
virs | above  
zem | below  
  
## How to Decline in the Genitive

I love that the genitive ending is the same for every declination in the
plural but sometimes the changes in the preceding consonant get me.

The endings are as follows:

    
    
    vsk.   1. dekl. | 2. dekl. | 2. dekl. exc. | 3. dekl.
    Kā?       -a    |    -a    |    -s         |   -us 
    
    vsk.   4. dekl. | 5. dekl. | 6. dekl.
    Kā?       -as   |    -es   |    -is 
    
    dsk.   1. dekl. | 2. dekl. | 2. dekl. exc. | 3. dekl.
    Kā?        -u   |    -u    |     -u        |   -u 
    
    dsk.   4. dekl. | 5. dekl. | 6. dekl
    Kā?        -u   |    -u   |    -u 
    
    Red indicates potential palatalization changes in the preceding consonant.