Breakdown of Мне нравится сегодняшняя тишина в парке.
Questions & Answers about Мне нравится сегодняшняя тишина в парке.
In Russian, the thing you like is the grammatical subject, and you are in the dative case as the experiencer.
- Мне нравится тишина. – Literally: Silence pleases me.
- тишина – subject (nominative)
- нравится – verb (3rd person singular)
- мне – indirect object (dative: to me)
«Я нравлюсь…» means “I am liked (by someone)”:
- Я нравлюсь ему. – He likes me. (Literally: I am pleasing to him.)
So to say “I like X”, you normally use:
- Мне нравится X. – X pleases me / I like X.
Russian often uses the dative case to mark the person who experiences a feeling or state:
- Мне холодно. – I am cold. (Literally: It is cold to me.)
- Ему скучно. – He is bored. (Literally: It is boring to him.)
- Нам нравится фильм. – We like the movie. (Literally: The movie pleases us.)
In «Мне нравится сегодняшняя тишина в парке», мне shows “to whom” the silence is pleasing: to me.
The verb must agree with the grammatical subject, which is the thing that pleases you.
- Here, the subject is тишина – a singular noun.
→ Therefore the verb is singular: нравится.
With a plural subject, the verb becomes plural:
- Мне нравятся книги. – I like (the) books.
- Ей нравятся эти парки. – She likes these parks.
So:
- Мне нравится тишина. – Silence pleases me. (singular)
- Мне нравятся деревья. – The trees please me. (plural)
Both can be translated as “I like”, but they have different nuances:
Мне нравится X
- More neutral, often about immediate impression or current situation.
- Can be more tentative or less strong.
- Мне нравится сегодняшняя тишина в парке. – I like today’s silence in the park (right now).
Я люблю X
- Stronger and more general liking or long‑term preference.
- Often about hobbies, tastes, or people you love.
- Я люблю тишину. – I (generally) love/like silence.
- Я люблю этот парк. – I love this park (in general).
In your sentence, «Мне нравится…» fits well because you’re talking about this particular, current silence today.
сегодня is an adverb: today. It modifies verbs:
- Мы гуляем сегодня. – We are walking today.
сегодняшний / сегодняшняя / сегодняшнее / сегодняшние is an adjective built from сегодня:
- сегодняшняя тишина – today’s silence
- сегодняшний день – today’s day / today (as a noun phrase)
In «сегодняшняя тишина», you need an adjective to describe the noun тишина, so you cannot use the adverb сегодня directly in that position. You could say:
- Мне нравится тишина сегодня в парке. – I like the silence in the park today.
Here сегодня modifies the whole situation (the time of the action), not the noun directly.
Adjectives in Russian agree with the noun in gender, number, and case.
- тишина is:
- feminine
- singular
- nominative (it’s the subject)
So the adjective must also be:
- сегодняшняя – feminine, singular, nominative form of сегодняшний.
Other forms for comparison:
- сегодняшний день (masc., sg., nom.)
- сегодняшнее утро (neut., sg., nom.)
- сегодняшние впечатления (plural, nom.)
Тишина is the subject of the sentence – it is the thing that does the action of the verb нравится (it pleases someone):
- (Что?) Тишина – subject in nominative
- (Кому?) Мне – dative (to whom it is pleasing)
- нравится – verb
Russian structure here is:
- [Subject in nominative] + нравится + [dative person]
So тишина must be in the nominative case.
Three different things:
в парк – accusative, direction: into the park
- Мы идём в парк. – We are going to the park.
в парке – prepositional, location: in the park
- Мы сидим в парке. – We are sitting in the park.
на парке – almost never used; на is not normally used with парк for location.
For a place where something happens inside the park, Russian uses в + prepositional:
- тишина в парке – the silence in the park
Russian word order is fairly flexible, though there are natural-sounding patterns. Besides:
- Мне нравится сегодняшняя тишина в парке.
You can say, for example:
- Мне нравится тишина в парке сегодня.
- Мне нравится тишина сегодня в парке.
- Сегодня мне нравится тишина в парке.
These are all grammatical but differ slightly in what is emphasized (today, the park, the silence, etc.).
However, some orders sound unnatural or overly poetic:
- Мне нравится сегодняшняя в парке тишина. – possible but feels poetic/marked.
- В парке мне нравится сегодняшняя тишина. – OK, with focus on in the park.
As a learner, stick to the more neutral:
- Мне нравится сегодняшняя тишина в парке.
- Сегодня мне нравится тишина в парке.
Standard literary stress is on the first syllable:
- нрА-ви-тся → нрАвится
Phonetically: something like [NRA-vee-tsa] (rolled or tapped r).
Some speakers say нравИтся in fast or colloquial speech, but dictionaries and formal speech prefer нрАвится, so that’s what you should learn and use.
The -ся / -сь ending marks a reflexive or “middle voice” verb. It often means the action turns back on the subject or has a more “internal” meaning.
- нравить (without -ся) is almost never used in modern Russian on its own.
- нравиться with -ся means “to be pleasing (to someone)”.
The -ся here is part of the dictionary form; you always learn the verb as нравиться:
- Мне нравится фильм. – I like the movie.
- Тебе нравятся эти люди? – Do you like these people?
Yes.
- Мне нравится тишина в парке. – I like the silence in the park.
Removing сегодняшняя just removes the “today” nuance. With сегодняшняя, you stress that it’s today’s silence in particular that you are enjoying:
- Мне нравится сегодняшняя тишина в парке. – Today the park is especially quiet, and I like that specific silence.
тишина – a noun: silence.
- Мне нравится тишина в парке. – I like the silence in the park.
тихо – an adverb / predicative: quiet(ly).
- Мне тихо в парке. – I feel it is quiet for me in the park.
- В парке тихо. – It is quiet in the park.
In your sentence the focus is on silence as a thing (a state, an atmosphere) that you like, so тишина is the natural choice.