When are two ducks not две утки? Yтки is plural of утка, right? Well, it all depends! Try saying “Bread for the two ducks.” What could be simpler? Хлеб для две утки. Sounds good, right? Wrong!
Ducks change into some strange mythical creatures called уток, when you want to feed them with bread! And the number two has to agree with it, so the sentence becomes: Хлеб для двух уток. These ducks are getting on my nerves. Why don’t they behave themselves, like any decent, self-respecting duck should? Why do they have to call themselves by these outlandish names, to trip up unwary language learners! Next they will be calling themselves DuckOM and DuckEB!
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Evgeny has a post about this with a lot of examples.
Yes, it’s difficult, but not so difficult as 16 verb tences in English!..
I’ve actually written several lessons about this combination of numver+adjective+ noun.
Here is the link to one of these lessons:
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Now you wish you married somebody from an Esperanto speaking country?
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I’ve come across a few long, tangled sentences in my Russian reading lately, and I’ve also recently helped parse some long, tangled English sentences for stumped learners this language. I honestly think that after you get over the novelty and have gotten a grasp on the grammar, it’s easier to decipher the Russian. Each word tells you up front how it fits into the sentence or clause! It’s obvious when you verb a noun, and there’s no disguising a gerund as a participle.
Buy, yeah, they did get a little carried away with the genitive case. 
Thank you for the link. I will need to understand the 55 blue words and the 30 yellow words before I can benefit from the explanation! But I will one day!
I asked my wife yesterday “why did you have to speak a category four language!” I love it really.
I’m sorry to hear it.
Then you can try another lessons about the numerals, maybe it will be easier to you:
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Thank you, Evgueny, I knew most of the words, so now I understand the theory. I have read an explanation of this in a text book before and I still only know the theory!
Try to make your own examples, don’t by afraid of mistakes!.. And with the praxis you’ll get accustomed to these strange Russian constructions with the numerals.
Evgueny, this course looks really interesting. I will probably start going through it.
I found for German that there were things I simply could not understand when I was a beginner, no matter how many times they were explained to me, but now seem so simply. For example, I remember being completely baffled by the fact that the word for the German language, Deutsch, is neuter, but the words for literally ‘the German language’, die detusche Sprache, are feminine. This fact was so confusing to me three years ago, and now seems so obvious that I am almost embarrassed by this.
Yes, please. If you have any queations, don’t be afraid of asking me.
@tortoise
I’ve written today another lessons about such difficult phrases like “ДВА МОИХ РУССКИХ ДРУГА”.
This lesson is a bit dificult for you, but it explaines all cases of the use such expressions. Here is the link: