GrammatikIndefinit

Indefinite pronouns point to a person, thing or quality without naming it: someone, something, some, a certain, any.

We divided them into two groups: The first makes combinations of an ordinary question word with one small marker. The second is a closed set of не́- words (не́кто, не́что, не́который, не́сколько).

Part I — Question word + marker

Take a question word, bolt on one of four little markers, and you have an indefinite. A few examples to get an idea:

• кто (who) → кто́-то (someone)
• что (what) → что́-нибудь (anything)
• како́й (which) → како́й-то (some kind of)

The question words

These are the question words that can be used with a marker:

The four markers

Here are the four, with the meaning each one adds:

-то, -нибудь and -либо come after the word and are joined with a hyphen; кое- is a prefix that comes before it.

The markers in detail

-то: specific but unknown

Translates to "someone", "something", "somewhere", "some kind of", ...:

• Кто́-то позвони́л. (Someone called (but I don’t know who).)
• Он что́-то сказа́л, но я не расслы́шал. (He said something, but I didn’t catch it.)
• Она́ купи́ла каку́ю-то кни́гу. (She bought some book (a definite one, unknown to me).)

Use -то for something specific and real that did happen or does exist but the speaker simply cannot name it. It is often used in statements of fact and in the past tense.

-нибудь: any

Translates to "anyone", "anything", "any kind of", "any one at all", "doesn’t matter which":

• Кто́-нибудь до́ма? (Is anyone home?)
• Купи́ что́-нибудь к ча́ю. (Buy anything for tea.)
• Позвони́ мне, е́сли что́-нибудь случи́тся. (Call me if anything happens.)
• За́втра я вам что́-нибудь расскажу́. (Tomorrow I’ll tell you something (future, not yet decided).)

Use -нибудь when the thing is not yet fixed - hypothetical, optional, “whichever”. It belongs in questions, the future, imperatives and conditions.

-либо: the bookish “any”

-либо means the same as -нибудь (“any at all”) but sounds formal / literary. You will see it in written and official texts; in speech, prefer -нибудь.

• Есть ли каки́е-либо вопро́сы? (Are there any questions whatsoever? — formal)
• без како́й-либо причи́ны (without any reason)

кое-: I know, but I’m not telling

The prefix кое- marks something the speaker knows perfectly well but chooses not to spell out - in English you might say "a certain..." or "something (that I have in mind)".

• Я кое-что́ тебе́ расскажу́. (I’ll tell you something (I know exactly what).)
• Мне ну́жно кое с кем поговори́ть. (I need to talk to a certain person.)

Watch the preposition split. When a preposition is used, it slips between кое- and the pronoun, and the hyphen disappears:

• кое с кем (with a certain person) — not с кое-кем
• кое о чём (about a certain thing)
• кое у кого́ (at a certain person’s)

-то vs -нибудь

Choosing the right option between "some" and "any" can be difficult at times. Observe the meaning flips:

A useful rule of thumb: if you can add “(no matter which)” in English, use -нибудь; if you mean “a certain (unknown) one that really exists”, use -то.

It works for adverbs too

Three of the words in the table above — где, когда́ and куда́ — are actually adverbs, not pronouns. They take the very same markers, follow the same -то/-нибудь split, and, being adverbs, never decline:

• где́-то (somewhere — a real place) / где́-нибудь (anywhere)
• когда́-то (once, at some past time) / когда́-нибудь (ever, someday)
• куда́-то (off to somewhere) / куда́-нибудь (anywhere, to some place or other)
• Он куда́-то ушёл. (He went off somewhere — really did.)
• Пое́дем куда́-нибудь ле́том? (Shall we go somewhere in summer?)

Declension: only the stem changes

Since these pronouns are built on кто, что, како́й, чей, they decline exactly like those question words. The important rule: the marker -то / -нибудь / -либо is frozen — only the front part takes case endings.

Pronouns on како́й and чей decline like adjectives and agree with their noun in gender, number and case: како́й-то челове́к, с како́й-то же́нщиной, каки́е-то лю́ди. See the genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and prepositional articles for the base endings.

With кое- the stem still declines, and a preposition splits the group: кое-кто́ → кое-кого́ → кое у кого́.

All combinations

Part II — The stressed не́- words

There are an additional four indefinite words. They all start with a stressed не́- prefix. They cover “a certain / some / several”:

The words не́который (especially the plural не́которые) and не́сколько are extremely common; не́кто and не́что are literary and rare. Meaning-wise не́кто / не́что overlap with кто́-то / что́-то, but they sound more formal and hardly change their form.

Both families vs. the negatives

Indefinite pronouns say “some/any”; their opposites — никто́, ничто́, никако́й (no one, nothing, no kind) — say “none” and take a double negative with не. Compare Кто́-то зна́ет (Someone knows) with Никто́ не зна́ет (No one knows). Those are covered in the negative pronouns article.

Mind the stress. The не́- indefinites and the ни- negatives look almost identical — the difference is where the stress falls: stressed не́- means “there is some”, unstressed ни- means “there is none”.

• не́кто (a certain person) vs никто́ (no one)
• не́что (something) vs ничто́ (nothing)

How common are they?

Prevalence of the combinations

Not every combination is equally frequent. The table below shows the relative frequency of each question word + marker in our example-sentence corpus, scaled so that the most common form (что́-то) is 100. Rows are sorted from most to least common overall.

The takeaways:

• что́-то and что́-нибудь dominate everyday Russian.
• кое- is overwhelmingly used with что (кое-что́).
• -либо stays rare everywhere except with когда́ (когда́-либо).
• Forms on чей and ско́лько are so infrequent they barely register.

Prevalence of the не́- words

The не́- words (Part II) on the same scale:

So не́сколько is in fact one of the most frequent indefinites of the whole topic — on a par with кто́-то — while не́кто is vanishingly rare.

Most-used list

The forms worth memorising first — everything scoring 10 or more above, from both tables, most common on top:

Wrap-up & reference

Common pitfalls, how often each form actually turns up, and a one-glance summary.

Common mistakes

• Using -то in a question or an order. Open contexts need -нибудь.
  Купи́ что́-то. (wrong for “buy anything”) → Купи́ что́-нибудь. (correct)
• Using -нибудь for a real past event. A definite thing that happened needs -то.
  Кто́-нибудь позвони́л. (wrong) → Кто́-то позвони́л. (correct)
• Not splitting кое- with a preposition.
  с кое-кем (wrong) → кое с кем (correct)
• Declining the marker instead of the stem. The marker never changes.
  кто-тому́ (wrong) → кому́-то (correct)

Summary

• Indefinite pronouns = question word (кто, что, како́й, чей) + a marker (-то, -нибудь, -либо, кое-).
• -то = specific but unknown; typical of statements and the past.
• -нибудь = non-specific “any”; typical of questions, futures, imperatives, conditions.
• -либо is the bookish equivalent of -нибудь.
• кое- = the speaker knows but won’t say; a preposition splits it (кое с кем).
• Only the stem declines; the marker stays fixed (кого́-то, кому́-нибудь, кем-то).
• A separate closed set of stressed не́- words — не́кто, не́что, не́который, не́сколько — also means “a certain / some / several”; keep them apart from the unstressed negatives ни- (не́кто vs никто́).