В тёмной комнате стоит старый стол.

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Breakdown of В тёмной комнате стоит старый стол.

• стоять: to stand
• комната: the room
• стол: the table

Questions & Answers about В тёмной комнате стоит старый стол.

Why is комнате in the prepositional case and not the accusative?

Because with the preposition в, Russian uses the prepositional case to show location (“where” something is). If you wanted to express motion into the room, you’d use the accusative: в комнату. Here we mean “in the room,” so комната (feminine) becomes комнате, and its adjective тёмный becomes тёмной in the same case.

Why is тёмной spelled with ё, and how is it pronounced?

The adjective тёмный (dark) always uses ё to signal the sound /jo/. In writing you might sometimes see е instead of ё, but formally it’s тёмный. The stress is on the first syllable: [ˈtʲom.nɨj], so тёмной is [tʲɵmˈnoj].

Why does старый end in -ый, and how do adjectives agree with nouns?

Adjectives in Russian must match the noun’s gender, number, and case. Here стол is masculine, singular, nominative (because it’s the subject), so the adjective takes the masculine nominative ending -ый. If the noun were feminine, you’d see -ая (e.g. тёмная комната).

How do you know стоит is the present tense of стоять (to stand)?