Thanks! What's троих? I thought it was три? Is that the genitive plural of три or is it трёх?

троих - genitive plural. For example: The three of us are going to have a safe date. У нас троих будет безопасное свидание.

Kyle, right, it's genitive plural of ТРИ, but ТРЕХ is said about inanimate objects while ТРОИХ - about animated objects

Thank you, Elena. This just gets more and more confusing. The book says that the genitive plural is used for animate objects, but you're saying that the genitive plural трёх is used with inanimate objects. So you would say Я вижу трёх больших стола? (or столов?)

Kyle, I'm very sorry for confusing you. I think I can't explain well. "Я вижу три больших стола" - правильно. Троих - родительный падеж от слова "трое", а не "три".

"Трех" - genitive plural from "три" (both animated and unanimated)

Just shoot me!

:)

I'm going to take a nap and maybe when I wake up, this will all start to make sense. Thanks for your help, Elena.

Sorry again :). Russian is a difficult language.

Oh no, I'm just joking. I appreciate your help and I'll probably have more questions later if you don't mind. I'm preparing for a test.

@Kyle your example translates to винительный падеж (answers on questions кого/что?).
"Я вижу трёх больших слонов" (*кого* я вижу?).
"Я вижу три больших стола" (*что* я вижу?).
Трое - троих - only animate.
Три - трёх - both animate/inanimate.

Спасибо, Sergey, Вы нас всех поправили с винительным падежом

@Elena эм, звучит как сарказм)

Нет, ни в коем случае, просто мы тут все родительный обсуждаем, а Вы так легко об'ьяснили

Thank you Sergey! So with animate nouns, you can optionally use три or трое, right? The professor said not to worry about трое for now, it won't be on the test. So that just leaves три, which has the accusative form три (things), трёх (people or animals), and the form трёх after prepositions like у, против, из-за, etc. Am I correct so far?

@Kyle you're welcome :)
And you're right: три стола; нет трёх столов; мы стоим у трёх столов.