Questions & Answers about Поздний ужин мешает мне спать.
Why is поздний ужин in the nominative case? I expected something else to be the subject.
In Russian, поздний ужин is the grammatical subject of the sentence – it is the thing that is doing the "hindering."
Pattern:
[Subject in nominative] + мешать + [someone in dative] + [infinitive]
So you have:
- Поздний ужин – subject (nominative)
- мешает – verb
- мне – indirect object (dative: "to me / for me")
- спать – infinitive (the action being hindered)
This matches the English structure "A late dinner keeps me from sleeping."
In both languages, "a late dinner" is the subject, not "I" or "me".
Why do we use мне instead of я?