Из крана течёт холодная вода.

Cold water flows from the faucet.

Breakdown of Из крана течёт холодная вода.

• вода: the water
• холодный: cold
• течь: to flow
• из: from
• кран: the faucet

Questions & Answers about Из крана течёт холодная вода.

Why is крана used instead of кран?

Because the preposition из requires the following noun to be in the genitive case. The nominative кран becomes крана in the genitive singular.

Why is из used with кран, and could we use с or от instead?

из indicates movement from inside something, so из крана means “from inside the tap.”
с usually means “off” or “from the surface” (e.g., с стола “off the table”).
от indicates origin or separation in a more abstract sense (“away from”), but sounds odd with кран. Thus из крана is the natural choice.

Which word is the subject of the sentence, and how do we know?

вода is the subject. It’s in the nominative case, and the verb течёт agrees with it in number and gender. The adjective холодная also appears in the feminine singular nominative to match вода.

Why is холодная used instead of холодно?

холодная is an adjective modifying the noun вода (“cold water”).
холодно is an adverb (“coldly”), which would describe how something happens, not the temperature of the water. To describe the noun itself, you need the adjective in the correct case.

How is течёт pronounced, and why is there a ё instead of е?

The letter ё always represents the sound [yo] and carries the stress. So течёт is pronounced te-CHYOT (stress on the second syllable). In many printed texts ё is written as е, but you still pronounce it as [yo]. For reference: кра́на has stress on the first а, and водá on the second а.

How would you change the sentence to past or future tense?

Past imperfective (ongoing past action):
Из крана текла холодная вода.
Past perfective (it started flowing):
Из крана потекла холодная вода.
Future imperfective (will keep flowing):
Из крана будет течь холодная вода.

Is the word order fixed, or can I say Холодная вода течёт из крана?

Russian word order is quite flexible. Холодная вода течёт из крана is equally correct. Placing Из крана at the beginning simply emphasizes where the water comes from; the overall meaning doesn’t change.

Can you transliterate Из крана течёт холодная вода?

A common transliteration is:
Iz krana techyot kholodnaya voda
To indicate stress:
iz kra-NA te-CHYOT kho-LOD-na-ya vo-DA