Breakdown of Мне страшно ошибаться на экзамене.
Questions & Answers about Мне страшно ошибаться на экзамене.
Russian often uses an impersonal construction to talk about temporary feelings or states:
- Мне страшно. – Literally: To me it-is-scary. → I’m scared / afraid.
- Мне холодно. – I’m cold.
- Мне грустно. – I’m sad.
So:
- мне is dative, marking the experiencer (the person who feels the emotion).
- страшно is a predicative word meaning it is scary.
Saying я страшный means I am scary / I look frightening (to others), not I’m scared. So for I’m scared, мне страшно is the natural form.
Here страшно is a predicative adverb (also called a “category of state” word). It functions like:
- жарко – it’s hot
- холодно – it’s cold
- грустно – it’s sad
In the pattern:
- Мне страшно ошибаться. – I’m scared to make mistakes.
it behaves almost like English “it is scary” or “I feel scared”, but Russian doesn’t use a separate pronoun оно (“it”) here. The sentence is grammatically impersonal: there is no grammatical subject, only a state страшно that applies to мне.
The pattern:
- Датив (кому) + страшно / стыдно / лень / трудно + инфинитив
expresses how someone feels about doing something.
Examples:
- Мне страшно ошибаться. – I’m scared of making mistakes.
- Ей стыдно признаться. – She is ashamed to admit it.
- Нам трудно понять. – It’s hard for us to understand.
So Мне страшно ошибаться на экзамене literally is To me it’s scary to make mistakes in the exam, i.e. I’m afraid of making mistakes in the exam.
Ошибаться (imperfective) focuses on the process or the possibility of making mistakes in general:
- Мне страшно ошибаться на экзамене.
I’m afraid of (the possibility of) making mistakes during the exam, in general.
If you say:
- Мне страшно ошибиться на экзамене.
you focus on one concrete act of making a mistake, more like I’m afraid of making a (single) mistake on the exam / of messing up the exam.
Both are correct; the imperfective ошибаться sounds more like “to be making mistakes (as a repeated / ongoing thing)”.
Ошибаться is the reflexive form of ошибать, but in modern Russian:
- ошибаться is the normal verb meaning to be mistaken, to make a mistake.
- Non‑reflexive ошибать is rare and has different/archaic meanings (e.g. to miscalculate, to misjudge).
So you should simply remember:
- ошибаться – to make mistakes, to be wrong
- ошибиться – perfective partner: to make a mistake (once), to be wrong (in one instance)
The -ся here is just part of the verb; you can’t drop it without changing (or losing) the meaning.
With экзамен (exam), Russian almost always uses на when talking about being at or during the exam:
- на экзамене – during the exam / in the exam situation
- на уроке – in class
- на лекции – at the lecture
So:
- ошибаться на экзамене = to make mistakes during the exam.
В экзамене would sound wrong in this context; в is used with экзамен in different meanings (e.g. in the exam there were 20 questions → в экзамене было 20 вопросов, but even there many speakers would still say в экзамене only rarely; more usual is в тесте or в задании).
Yes, you can, and Russian speakers often do. Then it becomes a fully impersonal sentence:
- Страшно ошибаться на экзамене. – It’s scary to make mistakes in the exam.
In context, it usually still means I’m scared, but it can also sound more general: It’s scary (for anyone) to make mistakes in the exam.
Adding мне:
- Мне страшно ошибаться на экзамене.
makes it explicit that you are the one who’s afraid.
Yes. Russian word order is flexible, and all of these are possible:
- Мне страшно ошибаться на экзамене. – neutral, most common.
- Мне страшно на экзамене ошибаться. – slight emphasis on during the exam.
- На экзамене мне страшно ошибаться. – emphasizes on the exam (as opposed to other situations).
What you generally don’t do is break мне страшно apart too much or separate ошибаться from its prepositional phrase in a strange way. For example, Страшно мне ошибаться на экзамене is possible but sounds more emotional / stylistically marked.