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I get really confused on when should I use какая and when какую, aren't the same thing?

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  • Or you can use Я увидел какую девушку ты пригласил на танец. (I saw which girl you invited to dance) Maybe I am missing a comma , I am a native Russian speaker not a linguist. Я увидел девушку, которую ты пригласил на танец (I saw the girl that you invited to dance) Those two sentences have a slightly different meaning
    – Polina F.
    Oct 1, 2013 at 15:21

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They are the same thing, in a certain sense. These are two grammatical cases of a single pronoun "какая" - "which"/"what" (a feminine form, the masculine being "какой"). Namely, "какая" is a nominative, and "какую" is an accusative.

Consequently, the form you have to choose is governed by the noun it substitutes or is attached to. For example, the nominative form is used in

Какая девушка тебе нравится?

Which girl do you like?

because the noun "девушка" (girl) is the subject in this sentence (in the Russian one) and is in nominative case itself. On the other hand, the accusative form is used in

Какую девушку ты бы пригласил на танец?

Which girl would you invite to a dance?

because the noun "девушка" is the object for the verb "пригласить (кого-то)", which requires its object to be in accusative.

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  • Oh no, the genitive will be "какой". In the second example the object is in accusative! -1
    – Anixx
    Sep 16, 2013 at 11:33
  • @Anixx: thank you, you are absolutely correct. Shame on me, fixed.
    – fjarri
    Sep 16, 2013 at 11:49
  • @Bogdan thank you very much! however I'm not very familiar with the words "genitive", "accusative", "nominative". I mean I've heard about them, but I'm not sure what they are, and if I'm not wrong, when you say accusative it means we're using direct object?
    – Ana Galois
    Sep 16, 2013 at 16:23
  • These are names of different grammatical cases. You might want to check out the corresponding wiki article, which will explain them much better than I possibly can. On your question about the accusative: basically, yes (but, again, see wiki for details).
    – fjarri
    Sep 16, 2013 at 16:27
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    @AnaGalois: Annix told Bogdan what the English name is for the noun case he used in the second example. Look in the back of your Russian textbook for the different cases that a noun can have. The case names in English and Spanish are pretty similar if you're using a book written in Spanish, since you're from Mexico.
    – KCd
    Sep 17, 2013 at 0:32
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Accusative is used when the object of the sentence has been affected directly by the subject.

e.g.: 

Я увидел девушку какую ты пригласил на танец
I saw the girl that you invited to dance.
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  • I'm sorry, but your example sentence isn't correct in 2 ways, first, a comma is needed after "девушку", then, the word "какую" doesn't fit here, "которую" must be used instead. And, naturally, a period at the end of sentence is missing. "Какой" when introducing an attributive clause means "such as", "the same as" and should be preceded by "такой [же]": "Я хочу такую же машину, какую купил Сергей."
    – Yellow Sky
    Sep 17, 2013 at 22:34
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    What you stated is completely true! Thank you for correcting...
    – Faruk Postacioglu
    Sep 18, 2013 at 10:51

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