Questions & Answers about Ребёнок сидит на ступеньке.
In Russian, every noun has a grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter). This is a property of the word itself, not of the real person or object.
- Ребёнок is grammatically masculine.
So any verb or adjective that refers to ребёнок will also be in masculine forms:
- маленький ребёнок сидит – a small child is sitting (маленький = masculine)
- уставший ребёнок – a tired child (уставший = masculine)
If you specifically want to say whether the child is a boy or girl, you would normally use мальчик (boy) or девочка (girl), which are also grammatically gendered (masculine and feminine, respectively).
The infinitive of сидит is сидеть – to sit, to be sitting.
Form сидит is:
- 3rd person singular
- present tense
- imperfective aspect
So сидит literally means:
- he/she/it sits
or, in natural English: - he/she/it is sitting
In Russian, the simple present (сидит) usually covers both English “sits” and “is sitting”, depending on context.
The preposition на can take either:
- Prepositional case – for a location (where something/someone is)
- Accusative case – for direction or movement to a place
Compare:
Ребёнок сидит на ступеньке.
→ He is on the step (location, static) → на + prepositional.Ребёнок сел на ступеньку.
→ He sat down on the step (movement to a new position) → на + accusative.
So in your sentence we are describing a state (the child is sitting there), not movement, so we use на ступеньке (prepositional case), not на ступеньку (accusative).
Ступеньке is in the prepositional singular case.
The base noun is ступенька (a step). It is a feminine noun ending in -ка. Its main singular forms:
- Nominative (who? what?): ступенька – a step
- Genitive (of what?): ступеньки
- Dative (to/for what?): ступеньке
- Accusative (object / motion to): ступеньку
- Instrumental (with what?): ступенькой / ступенькою
- Prepositional (about/at/on what?): (о) ступеньке
After на with a meaning of location (where?), we use prepositional → на ступеньке.
Both are grammatically correct, but they mean slightly different things:
Ребёнок сидит на ступеньке.
– The child is sitting on one particular step. The focus is on a single step.Ребёнок сидит на ступеньках.
– The child is sitting on the steps / on the staircase in a more general sense.
You are not emphasizing exactly which step, just the area made of steps.
So на ступеньке is more specific and visual: you can imagine exactly one step under the child.
Yes, you can say:
- Ребёнок сидит на лестнице. – The child is sitting on the staircase.
The nuance:
- ступенька – a single step. Very concrete: the child’s bottom is literally on one step.
- лестница – the stairs / staircase as a whole construction.
Using на лестнице emphasizes the location as the staircase area, not the specific step.
All of these are grammatically correct and mean essentially the same thing, but the focus changes slightly.
Ребёнок сидит на ступеньке.
– Neutral, most basic word order (Subject–Verb–Object/Place).
– Focus on ребёнок (the child) as topic: The child is sitting on a step.На ступеньке сидит ребёнок.
– Slight emphasis on на ступеньке (location).
– Often used when contrasting locations, or when you first describe the scene:
On the step, there is a child sitting (as opposed to standing somewhere else).Сидит ребёнок на ступеньке.
– A bit more poetic or expressive, common in storytelling or song lyrics.
– The verb сидит comes first, giving a sense of “there is sitting a child on a step”.
The core meaning is the same; word order mostly affects what is highlighted in the sentence.
The verb сидеть conjugated with ребёнок:
Present:
- Ребёнок сидит на ступеньке. – The child is sitting on the step.
Past: (agreeing in gender with ребёнок = masculine)
- Ребёнок сидел на ступеньке. – The child was sitting on the step.
Future: Russian uses either compound or simple future.
For сидеть (imperfective), we normally use the compound future:- Ребёнок будет сидеть на ступеньке. – The child will be sitting / will sit on the step (emphasis on the process or repeated action).
If you want a single completed act of sitting down (rather than just being in the sitting state), you would use сесть (perfective):
- Ребёнок сядет на ступеньку. – The child will sit down on the step.
The letter ё is always pronounced /yo/, like “yo” in “yoga”, and it is always stressed when written.
- ребёнок is pronounced roughly re-BYÓ-nok:
- ре- like re- in red (but shorter)
- -бё- like byo
- -нок like nok
Important details:
- In many real-life Russian texts, ё is often written as е: ребенок.
- But the pronunciation stays the same: still /rye-BYOnok/, not /re-benok/.
- For learners, it’s very helpful to keep ё written, because it shows stress and the correct vowel quality clearly.
Ребёнок has an irregular plural:
- Singular: ребёнок – child
- Plural: дети – children
This is similar to English child → children, not childs.
Key forms:
- Nominative:
- один ребёнок – one child
- много детей – many children (genitive plural)
The stem ребёнок does not simply get an ending; the plural uses a completely different root (дет-), inherited historically from Old Russian. You just have to memorize дети as the plural of ребёнок.
Example with your sentence:
- Дети сидят на ступеньке. – The children are sitting on the step.
- Note: сидят (3rd person plural present).
Russian does not use a/an/the, so Ребёнок сидит на ступеньке can translate as:
- A child is sitting on a step.
- The child is sitting on the step.
The choice in English depends on context, not different Russian words.
To make the meaning more specific in Russian, speakers use context, word order, and pronouns/demonstratives:
Этот ребёнок сидит на этой ступеньке.
– This child is sitting on this step.Наш ребёнок сидит на ступеньке.
– Our child is sitting on the step.Там ребёнок сидит на ступеньке.
– There is a child sitting on a step (introducing some unknown child).
Yes, ступенька is a diminutive form derived from ступень.
- ступень – a step (more neutral, can be slightly formal or technical, can also mean “stage / level” figuratively).
- ступенька – little step, often more everyday, concrete, and visual; very natural when talking about stairs, doorsteps, etc., especially with children or in casual speech.
In everyday conversation, many speakers will spontaneously choose ступенька when they are literally imagining someone sitting on a step.
Russian does not have a separate present progressive tense like English (is sitting).
The simple present in Russian usually covers both:
- Он сидит. – He sits. / He is sitting.
Context tells you whether it refers to:
- a general habit: Он всегда сидит на первой ступеньке. – He always sits on the first step.
- a current action: Смотри, ребёнок сидит на ступеньке. – Look, the child is sitting on the step (right now).
So сидит by itself already includes the meaning of “is sitting” when the context is present and immediate.
Yes, you can sometimes omit ребёнок and say:
- Сидит на ступеньке. – (Someone) is sitting on the step.
This is possible when:
- The person is visually obvious from the situation (you and your listener see the scene).
- The subject was already mentioned earlier in the conversation, so it’s clear who you are talking about.
This creates a more colloquial or storytelling feel, a bit like saying in English:
“Sitting on the step, (there) is a kid.” / “There he is, sitting on the step.”
To ask “Where is the child sitting?” you say:
- Где сидит ребёнок?
The question word где (“where?” in the sense of location) requires prepositional case after prepositions like на, в, etc.
So the answer:
- Ребёнок сидит на ступеньке.
Here на + ступеньке uses the prepositional case, because we are answering где? (where?).
If you instead asked about direction (“Onto what does the child sit down?”), you’d use куда? (to where?) and the accusative:
- Куда сел ребёнок? – Where did the child sit down (to)?
- Ребёнок сел на ступеньку. – The child sat down on(to) the step.
So:
- где? → на ступеньке (prepositional, location)
- куда? → на ступеньку (accusative, direction)