Breakdown of Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
Questions & Answers about Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
Russian often uses an impersonal construction for feelings, states, and how easy/difficult something is.
- Мне легче... literally: “To me it-is-easier…”
- Natural English: “It is easier for me…”
So:
- мне = dative of я (“to me / for me”)
- The sentence has no explicit subject like я. The idea “it” is built into the structure мне + (adverb/predicative).
You see the same pattern in:
- Мне холодно. – I’m cold. (lit. It is cold to me.)
- Ему трудно работать ночью. – It’s hard for him to work at night.
So мне легче follows the same pattern: It is easier for me…
Легче is the comparative form of легко (“easily”) / лёгкий (“light, easy”).
In this sentence it functions as a predicative word of state, something between an adverb and an adjective, used in impersonal constructions like:
- Мне легко. – It’s easy for me.
- Мне легче. – It’s easier for me.
Key points:
- You don’t change легче for gender, number, or case (no легчее, легчея etc.).
It’s part of a fixed pattern: (Dative person) + (adverb/comparative) + infinitive
– Мне легче читать. – It’s easier for me to read.So, treat легче here as “easier” in the sense “it is easier (for me)” rather than as something that must agree with книга or any noun.
Я легче читаю would be very odd and usually ungrammatical in this meaning.
- Я легче читаю would sound like “I read more lightly / in an easier manner,” but it’s not how Russians express “it is easier for me to read.”
The natural pattern is:
- Мне легче + infinitive = It is easier for me to (do something).
Examples:
- Мне легче работать дома. – It’s easier for me to work at home.
- Ей проще говорить по-английски. – It’s easier for her to speak English.
Using я as the subject would require a different verb or phrasing, e.g.:
- Я лучше читаю вечером. – I read better in the evening.
But if you specifically want to talk about ease, Russian strongly prefers мне легче + infinitive.
In Russian, when you use a comparative (like легче, лучше, быстрее, etc.) and then compare it with чем, you usually put a comma before чем:
- Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
– It’s easier for me to read a book in the evening than in the morning. - Ему удобнее работать дома, чем в офисе.
The comma separates the main statement from the comparison clause that starts with чем (“than”).
There are cases without commas in short or fixed expressions, but here the standard written form clearly uses the comma.
Yes, that’s absolutely correct and very natural:
- Мне легче читать вечером, чем утром.
– It’s easier for me to read in the evening than in the morning.
Differences in nuance:
- читать книгу – focuses on reading a book specifically.
- читать – more general: reading anything (books, articles, etc.).
Both are grammatical; you choose depending on whether you want to stress “a book” or reading in general.
Russian strongly prefers infinitive verb constructions after words like легко, трудно, легче, проще:
- Мне легче читать книгу. – It’s easier for me to read a book.
- Ему сложно понять это. – It’s hard for him to understand this.
Using a noun like чтение (“reading”) sounds formal or unnatural here:
- Мне легче чтение книги вечером... – grammatically possible, but very stiff and odd in everyday speech.
So the natural pattern is:
- (Dative person) + легче / трудно / легко + infinitive
Imperfective verbs are used for:
- general habits
- processes
- “in general, doing X is easier/harder”
In this sentence we are talking about a general tendency:
- Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
– In general, it’s easier for me to read a book in the evening than in the morning.
If you said прочитать книгу, you’d focus on completing the whole action (finish the book once), which doesn’t fit this general-habit meaning:
- Мне легче прочитать книгу вечером, чем утром.
– Sounds like: “It’s easier for me to finish reading a book in the evening than in the morning” – possible, but much less common and more specific.
For typical “it’s easier to do X” in a general sense, use imperfective: читать, работать, учить etc.
Вечером and утром here are instrumental singular forms of the nouns вечер (evening) and утро (morning), used adverbially to mean “in the evening / in the morning.”
This is a very common pattern:
- утром – in the morning
- днём – in the daytime
- вечером – in the evening
- ночью – at night
You would not say в вечер or в утро in this meaning. Instead you either say:
- вечером / утром
or - по вечерам – in the evenings (regularly)
- по утрам – in the mornings (regularly)
So: Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром. = “It’s easier for me to read a book in the evening than in the morning.”
Yes, Russian word order is flexible, and several variants are natural, with slightly different emphasis:
- Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
– Neutral order; focus on the whole statement. - Вечером мне легче читать книгу, чем утром.
– Emphasizes вечером (“In the evening, it’s easier for me to read a book…”). - Мне вечером легче читать книгу, чем утром.
– Slight emphasis on вечером as the time when it’s easier.
All of these are grammatical. What you cannot do is break words in a way that separates легче from мне or the infinitive unnaturally, e.g. Мне легче вечером, читать книгу чем утром – that’s wrong.
Because легче here does not modify книга. It describes the situation / action, not the book.
- It’s not “book that is easier.”
- It’s “it is easier (for me) to read a book.”
So:
- книга is feminine, but легче doesn’t care about gender.
- легче is a comparative predicative used in impersonal sentences: мне легче, ему труднее, ей проще.
If you wanted an adjective that agrees with книга, you’d say something different, like:
- Эта книга легче (другой). – This book is easier (than the other one).
(Here легче compares books and does relate to книга.)
But in Мне легче читать книгу, легче describes the ease of the activity for the person, not a property of the book.
In this sentence, чем introduces the second part of the comparison:
- Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
– It’s easier for me to read a book in the evening than in the morning.
General pattern:
- X (comparative) чем Y = “X-er than Y”
Examples:
- Ему лучше работать дома, чем в офисе. – It’s better for him to work at home than in the office.
- Она быстрее читает, чем пишет. – She reads faster than she writes.
There is another comparative construction in Russian using the genitive instead of чем, e.g.:
- Она моложе брата. – She is younger than her brother.
But with легче мне делать X, чем Y, using чем is the normal, natural choice.
Yes, you can, but the nuance changes slightly:
Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
– It is easier for me (less effort, less difficulty).Мне проще читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
– It is simpler for me (less complicated, more straightforward). Often close in meaning to легче.Мне удобнее читать книгу вечером, чем утром.
– It is more convenient for me (fits my schedule better, more comfortable).
All three are grammatical and common with мне + comparative + infinitive. The choice depends on what exactly you want to emphasize: effort (легче), simplicity (проще), or convenience (удобнее).
Для меня (“for me”) is possible in other contexts, but with feelings, states, ease/difficulty, Russian strongly prefers the dative pattern:
- Мне легче. – It’s easier for me.
- Мне трудно. – It’s hard for me.
- Ей скучно. – She is bored. (It’s boring to her.)
Для меня легче читать... is understandable, but it sounds less natural and more “translated” from English.
So, for “it is easier/harder for someone (to do something),” the idiomatic, everyday Russian is:
- (Dative pronoun) + легче / трудно / легко + infinitive
→ Мне легче читать книгу вечером, чем утром.