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Questions & Answers about Довольный гость улыбается.
What part of speech is Довольный, and why does it look the way it does?
Довольный is an adjective in the nominative singular masculine form. In Russian, adjectives agree in gender, number, and case with the noun they modify—in this case гость. So because гость is masculine, singular, and the subject of the sentence, its adjective also appears as Довольный.
Why is гость in the nominative case?
The nominative case marks the subject of a sentence—the person or thing performing the action. Here, гость (“guest”) is who is doing the smiling, so it stands in the nominative.
What does the suffix -ся in улыбается indicate?
The suffix -ся makes улыбаться a reflexive verb. It doesn’t mean “he smiles to himself,” but is simply how Russian verbs like “to smile” are formed. Many intransitive verbs in Russian use -ся even if the action isn’t reflexive in the English sense.
Why is улыбается in the third person singular?
Because the subject гость is third person singular, the verb must match:
я улыбаюсь (I smile)
ты улыбаешься (you smile)
он/она улыбается (he/she smiles)
Here он улыбается corresponds to “the guest smiles.”