Questions & Answers about Половина книги уже прочитана.
The noun книги is in the genitive singular because половина (“half”) behaves like a “part of a whole” noun.
In Russian, when you talk about part of something (half, a piece, a slice, a group, etc.), the “whole” usually goes into the genitive:
- половина книги – half of the book
- кусок хлеба – a piece of bread
- стакан воды – a glass of water
So книги = “of (the) book,” not the subject by itself. The grammatical subject is половина, which stays in the nominative.
In this sentence, половина is the grammatical subject, so it must be in the nominative case: половина.
- Nominative (subject): Половина книги уже прочитана. – “Half of the book is already read.”
- Accusative (object): Я уже прочитал половину книги. – “I have already read half of the book.”
So:
- Subject → nominative: половина
- Object → accusative: половину
The genitive книги stays the same in both cases because it depends on половина, not on the verb.
The word прочитана agrees in gender and number with the subject половина.
- половина is a feminine noun (like most nouns ending in -а).
- Therefore, the short passive participle must also be feminine: прочитана.
Compare:
- Книга прочитана. – The book (fem.) is read.
- Расска́з прочита́н. – The story (masc.) is read.
- Письмо́ прочита́но. – The letter (neut.) is read.
Colloquially, you might sometimes hear neuter прочитано with amounts, but the grammatically correct form here is the feminine прочитана, matching половина.
Прочитана is a short passive participle of the perfective verb прочитать (“to read through / finish reading”). In use, it behaves much like a passive verb form:
- Literally: “Half of the book is already read.”
Grammatically, short passive participles (прочитан, прочитана, прочитано, прочитаны) are a special category: they come from verbs but function like a predicate (“is read”), similar to a passive construction in English.
In the present tense, Russian usually omits the verb “to be” (есть):
- Я студент. – “I (am) a student.”
- Книга прочитана. – “The book (is) read.”
So in Половина книги уже прочитана, the full “logical” structure is:
- (Есть) прочитана половина книги. – The (is) is just not pronounced.
You would explicitly use forms of быть in the past or future:
- Половина книги уже была прочитана. – Half of the book had already been read.
- Половина книги будет прочитана завтра. – Half of the book will be read tomorrow.
No, that would be incorrect in standard Russian.
- прочитала is a past tense active verb (feminine, “she read / it read”), so it would mean “Half of the book has read (something)” — as if the book itself is doing the reading.
What you want is a passive result (“is read”), not an active action by the subject, so you must use the passive participle:
- Половина книги уже прочитана. – Half of the book is already read.
- Or actively, with a human subject: Я уже прочитал половину книги. – I have already read half of the book.
The given sentence is passive and focuses on the state of the book:
- Половина книги уже прочитана. – “Half of the book is already read.”
If you want to say what you have done, you normally use an active sentence:
- Я уже прочитал половину книги. (male speaker)
- Я уже прочитала половину книги. (female speaker)
So:
- Passive, result/state: Половина книги уже прочитана.
- Active, your action: Я уже прочитал(а) половину книги.
Perfective aspect in Russian expresses a completed result. Прочитана shows that the action of reading that half is finished:
- Половина книги уже прочитана. – Half of the book is (already) read completely.
If you used an imperfective like читать, it would sound like an ongoing or repeated process and you wouldn’t normally form this kind of resultative passive with it. For an ongoing process, you might say something else:
- Я читаю книгу. – I am reading the book.
- Я читаю половину книги каждый день. – I read half the book every day.
But when you state a finished, achieved result (“is already read”), the perfective прочитать → прочитана is the natural choice.
Yes, you can change the word order:
- Половина книги уже прочитана. – Neutral, slightly focusing on “half of the book.”
- Уже прочитана половина книги. – Slightly more emphasis on уже прочитана (“is already read”), as if you’re surprised or contrasting with expectations.
The basic meaning stays the same; Russian allows relatively flexible word order to shift emphasis. However, you generally would not say something like Половина уже книги прочитана; that sounds unnatural.
Уже means “already” and adds the idea that the result is earlier than expected / earlier than some reference point.
- Половина книги прочитана. – Half of the book is read. (Just a fact.)
- Половина книги уже прочитана. – Half of the book is already read. (Implying progress, maybe sooner than expected, or in contrast to earlier.)
You can leave it out if you don’t want that nuance, but it’s very natural here because we often talk about how much of a book is already done.
It is genitive singular of книга (“book”):
- Nominative singular: книга
- Genitive singular: книги
- Nominative plural: книги
- Genitive plural: книг
So although книги can be both nominative plural and genitive singular, in this sentence the structure половина + GEN tells you it must be genitive singular: “half of the book.”
Stress placement:
- Полови́на – pa-la-VEE-na (stress on -ви-)
- кни́ги – KNEE-gee (stress on the first syllable)
- уже́ – oo-ZHE (stress on the second syllable)
- прочи́тана – pra-CHEE-ta-na (stress on -чи-)
Putting it together (marking stressed syllables in caps):
pa-la-VEE-na KNEE-gi oo-ZHE pra-CHEE-ta-na.