Questions & Answers about Чистая одежда лежит в шкафу.
Why is одежда singular here while English uses the plural clothes?
Одежда is a collective (mass) noun in Russian. It names garments as a whole and always takes singular agreement. In English clothes is inherently plural, but in Russian you’d keep одежда singular. To talk about individual items you’d use countable words like рубашка (shirt) or брюки (trousers).
Why does the adjective чистая end in -ая?
Adjectives in Russian agree with the noun in gender, number and case. Одéжда is feminine, singular, nominative, so the adjective takes the feminine singular nominative ending -ая.
What case is в шкафу, and why is the ending -у instead of -е?
This is the so-called second prepositional (locative) case, used after в or на to indicate location with certain nouns (often monosyllabic masculine): в лесу, на мосту, в шкафу. The regular prepositional ending -е (as in в шкафе) also exists but the -у form is idiomatic here.
Can I also say в шкафе, or is that wrong?