Breakdown of После ужина я чувствую себя сытым и спокойно сижу в своём кресле.
Questions & Answers about После ужина я чувствую себя сытым и спокойно сижу в своём кресле.
In Russian, the preposition после (after) always takes the genitive case.
- Nominative: ужин (dinner)
- Genitive singular: ужина
So:
- после ужина = after dinner
- после работы = after work
- после дождя = after the rain
Putting ужин in any other case here would be ungrammatical. The form ужина simply shows “after X” where X is in the genitive.
The verb чувствовать means “to feel” something; it normally needs an object.
- Я чувствую радость. – I feel joy.
- Я чувствую боль. – I feel pain.
When you want to say I feel + adjective (I feel full, tired, sick, etc.), Russian usually says “I feel myself [adjective]”:
- я чувствую себя сытым – lit. I feel myself full
- я чувствую себя усталым – I feel tired
- я чувствую себя больным – I feel ill
Here себя is the direct object of чувствую. Without себя, the verb is left “hanging”, as if you were going to say what exactly you feel:
- После ужина я чувствую… – After dinner I feel… (and you must continue: радость, усталость, etc.)
So чувствовать себя + (adjective in instrumental) is the natural Russian way to say to feel + adjective.
Сытым is the instrumental case of the adjective сытый (full, having eaten enough), masculine singular.
With чувствовать себя, Russian normally puts the adjective in the instrumental case:
- Я чувствую себя сытым. – I feel full.
- Я чувствую себя усталым. – I feel tired.
- Она чувствует себя счастливой. – She feels happy.
- Мы чувствуем себя уверенными. – We feel confident.
Grammar-wise:
- себя is the object of чувствую.
- сытым is in the instrumental, describing the state in which I feel myself.
Pattern: чувствовать (кого? что?) себя (каким?) → adjective in instrumental.
So сытым is just сытый put into the instrumental form to fit this pattern.
All three come from the same root сыт-, but they are different forms.
Сытый – full-form adjective (dictionary form)
- Masculine nominative singular: сытый
- Used attributively or as a predicate with cases:
- сытый человек – a full/satiated person
- чувствовать себя сытым – (instr.)
- быть сытым – (instr.)
Сыт – short-form adjective, masculine singular
- Used mainly as a predicate (statement of state):
- Я сыт. – I am full.
- Мы сыты. – We are full. (plural short form: сыты)
This is a very common everyday way to say you’ve eaten enough.
- Used mainly as a predicate (statement of state):
Сытым – instrumental singular masculine of сытый
- Used in our sentence:
- Я чувствую себя сытым. – I feel full.
- Also:
- Я был сытым. – I was full.
- Он ушёл сытым и довольным. – He left full and satisfied.
- Used in our sentence:
So:
- After быть / казаться / становиться / чувствовать себя when you describe a state, you often get full-form adjective in instrumental (сытым).
- As a simple “I am X” statement, you often see the short form: Я сыт.
Yes, you can, and it’s correct:
- После ужина я сыт. – After dinner, I’m full.
Differences in nuance:
- Я сыт – short, neutral statement of fact: “I am full.”
- Я чувствую себя сытым – emphasizes the subjective feeling of fullness; stylistically a bit longer and more “descriptive”.
In your full sentence:
- После ужина я чувствую себя сытым и спокойно сижу в своём кресле.
the longer form flows nicely as a description of a relaxed state that then continues with и спокойно сижу…
Here спокойно is an adverb, meaning calmly / peacefully.
It answers the question “Как я сижу?” – How do I sit? → спокойно.
Formally it’s built from the adjective спокойный:
- Adjective: спокойный человек – a calm person
- Adverb: сидеть спокойно – to sit calmly
In Russian, adverbs of manner are usually formed by taking the adjective stem and adding -о:
- тихий → тихо – quiet → quietly
- быстрый → быстро – fast → quickly
- спокойный → спокойно – calm → calmly
So we use the adverb спокойно with the action verb сижу, not the adjective спокойный, because we’re describing how the action is done, not what the chair or person is as a static quality.
Сижу is the 1st person singular present form of the verb сидеть (to sit, to be sitting).
Conjugation of сидеть in the present:
- я сижу – I sit / I am sitting
- ты сидишь – you sit
- он / она сидит – he/she sits
- мы сидим – we sit
- вы сидите – you (pl/formal) sit
- они сидят – they sit
A couple of points:
- The infinitive сидеть ends in -еть, but the 1st person singular is сижу, not сидю; this is just how this verb is conjugated and must be memorized.
- Russian does not have a special present continuous form; я сижу can mean both I sit and I am sitting, depending on context.
In modern Russian, the natural collocation is сидеть в кресле – “to sit in an armchair”.
Some common patterns:
- сидеть в кресле – in an armchair
- сидеть на стуле – on a chair
- сидеть на диване – on a sofa
- сидеть на скамейке – on a bench
So the choice of в or на is largely lexical (fixed by usage), not purely logical/geometric.
- сидеть в кресле suggests sitting in the “space” of the armchair.
- сидеть на кресле would sound unusual and might imply sitting perched on top of it in a strange way (on the armrest, on the back, etc.), not in the normal way.
For everyday “sitting in your armchair”, Russians say в кресле.
Свой is the reflexive possessive pronoun: “one’s own”.
When the possessor is the grammatical subject of the sentence, Russian strongly prefers свой rather than мой / твой / наш / ваш:
- Я сижу в своём кресле. – I sit in my (own) armchair.
- Он читает в своей комнате. – He reads in his (own) room.
- Мы говорим о своих планах. – We talk about our (own) plans.
You could say:
- После ужина я чувствую себя сытым и спокойно сижу в моём кресле.
It’s grammatically correct but sounds less natural and can even create a tiny ambiguity (as if you’re contrasting your chair with someone else’s). Своём here is the idiomatic, default choice.
В своём кресле is in the prepositional case, used here for location (where?).
Preposition:
- в
- prepositional → “in, at” (when talking about location, not motion)
- в
Noun:
- кресло – armchair (neuter noun)
- Prepositional singular neuter: кресле
- в кресле – in the armchair
Possessive pronoun свой:
- Neuter, singular, prepositional: своём
- Pattern is like мой → в моём, свой → в своём
So:
- в своём кресле = “in my own armchair”
- Both своём and кресле are in the prepositional case, agreeing in number (singular) and gender (neuter).
Yes. Russian word order is relatively flexible, and all of these are grammatically correct:
После ужина я чувствую себя сытым и спокойно сижу в своём кресле.
– Neutral, common order (time at the beginning).Я после ужина чувствую себя сытым и спокойно сижу в своём кресле.
– Slight extra emphasis on я at the start, but still natural.После ужина я спокойно сижу в своём кресле и чувствую себя сытым.
– Emphasizes the calm sitting, then adds the feeling.Я спокойно сижу в своём кресле после ужина и чувствую себя сытым.
– Emphasizes the calm sitting in the armchair after dinner.
Word order in Russian is often used for emphasis and rhythm, since the grammatical roles are shown by endings, not position.
There is one subject (я) and two predicates (чувствую себя сытым and сижу в своём кресле) joined by и:
- (Я) чувствую себя сытым и (я) спокойно сижу в своём кресле.
In Russian, when two verbs (or verb phrases) share the same subject and are simply joined by и in a single simple sentence, you do not put a comma:
- Я встал и пошёл домой. – I got up and went home.
- Она читала и писала. – She was reading and writing.
So:
- После ужина я чувствую себя сытым и спокойно сижу в своём кресле.
is treated as one simple sentence with a compound predicate, and no comma is needed before и.