Forming Plurals.

The Nominative Case - Plural (Subject)

In Russian, in the nominative case, you make a plural by using the letters "и", "ы", "я" or "а".

For masculine nouns:

If the word ends in a consonant, add “ы”.

Replace “й” with “и”


Replace “ь” with “и”

For feminine nouns:

Replace “я” with “и”

Replace “ь” with “и”

Replace “а” with “ы” (unless previous consonant is Г, К, Х, Ж, Ч, Ш, Щ then replace with "и" as per spelling rules.)

For neuter nouns:

Replace “о” with “а”

Replace “е” with “я” (don't forget the <a href="http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/spelling_rules.php">spelling rules</a>)

Some examples:

студент (student) - студенты (students)
газета (newspaper) - газеты (newspapers)
здание (building) - здания (buildings)

The Accusative Case - Plural (Direct Object)

For plural nouns the accusative case just 'borrows' from the other cases, depending on whether the object is animate or not.

Inanimate nouns (not-alive) : Same as the nominative plural.

Animate nouns (alive) : Same as the genitive plural.

The Genitive Case - Plural (Possession)

The genitive seems to have the most rules for the plural, but it generally ends in -ов (manculine) or it is cut short (feminine). These rules refer to converting nouns from the nominative singular (dictionary form).

For masculine nouns:

If ends in "ж,ч,ш,щ,ь" then add "ей"

If ends in "й, ц" (stressed) add "ев"

All other masuline nouns end in "ов"

For feminine nouns:

If ends in "а" then drop "а" (no ending)

If ends in [consonant] "я" then "ь"

If ends in [vowel] "я" then "й"

If ends in "ь" then add "ей"

Note: If a feminine word ends in a double consonant it is quite common for a vowel (о, е) to be inserted for easy pronunciation. (марка - марок, англичанка - англичанок, девушка - девушек)

For neuter nouns:

If ends in "о" then drop "о" (no ending)

If ends in "е" becomes "ей"

If ends in "ие" becomes "ий"

Some examples:
студент - студентов (students')
газета - газет (newspapers')
здание - зданий (buildings')

General use of plurals.

The Russian language works a little differently depending on whether you are counting something, or whether you are just using general plurals. For example in a sentence like “The books are on the table” we don’t specify how many books are on the shelf. In this instance you should just have the word ‘books’ in it’s normal case, but in the plural form.

Here are some examples:

Книги на столе - The books are on the table.

Анна любит книги - Anna loves books.