Breakdown of Возле парка я встречаю девушку‑волонтёра, которая выгуливает собак из приюта.
Questions & Answers about Возле парка я встречаю девушку‑волонтёра, которая выгуливает собак из приюта.
Возле always takes the genitive case.
- Nominative: парк
- Genitive singular: парка
Since возле means near / by, the noun after it must be in the genitive, so возле парка is correct, and возле парк is ungrammatical.
Other common prepositions that also require genitive:
- у парка – by / at the park
- около парка – near the park
All three can often be translated as near / by, but they have slightly different flavors:
- возле парка – neutral near the park, commonly used in speech.
- у парка – literally at/by the park, often feels a bit closer to the object (right by the border of the park, at the park).
- около парка – around / near the park, can sound a bit more bookish or formal, but is also common.
In this sentence, у парка and около парка would be grammatically fine; the nuance difference is small, and all three are possible in many contexts.
Встречать and встречаться are related but different:
встречать кого? – to meet / run into someone (one-sided action from the subject’s point of view)
- Я встречаю девушку‑волонтёра. – I meet / run into a female volunteer.
встречаться (с кем?) – to meet (each other) / to hang out / to date (mutual, often arranged or regular)
- Я встречаюсь с девушкой. – We are meeting / I’m dating a girl.
In the original sentence, you are describing simply encountering her (possibly regularly, on your way), not meeting each other by arrangement, so я встречаю is correct.
Imperfective встречаю in the present can mean:
Right now / around now – I am meeting:
- Сейчас возле парка я встречаю девушку‑волонтёра…
Habitual / repeated action – I (usually) meet / I tend to meet:
- Возле парка я встречаю девушку‑волонтёра…
→ Suggests you see her there regularly.
- Возле парка я встречаю девушку‑волонтёра…
If you want to describe a single completed event in the past, you would use perfective встретил:
- Возле парка я встретил девушку‑волонтёра… – One time, I met a female volunteer near the park.
Because it is the direct object of я встречаю, so it must be in the accusative case.
Base forms (nominative):
- девушка – girl / young woman
- волонтёр – volunteer
Accusative singular:
- девушку (feminine, animate)
- волонтёра (masculine, animate)
When you have this type of hyphenated construction referring to one person (девушка‑волонтёр – a young woman who is a volunteer), both parts decline:
- Nominative: девушка‑волонтёр (who?)
- Accusative: девушку‑волонтёра (whom?) – after я встречаю
So я встречаю девушку‑волонтёра is grammatically correct and required here.
Many profession and role nouns in Russian are grammatically masculine by default, even when they refer to women:
- врач – doctor (man or woman)
- инженер – engineer (man or woman)
- волонтёр – volunteer (man or woman)
The context (девушка‑волонтёр) makes it clear she is female, even though волонтёр is masculine grammatically.
Волонтёрка does exist in colloquial usage and in some feminist or informal contexts, but:
- It can still sound informal / stylistically marked to many speakers.
- In neutral standard Russian, волонтёр for a woman is more typical.
So девушку‑волонтёра is the most standard form; девушку‑волонтёрку would sound colloquial and not everyone would like it.
Yes, you could say:
- Возле парка я встречаю волонтёра, который выгуливает собак из приюта.
Then you are simply saying I meet a volunteer, with no explicit indication of gender (grammatically masculine, but could be a woman).
Adding девушку‑волонтёра specifies that the volunteer is a young woman, and the hyphen connects her role and gender into one description: a young woman volunteer.
Которая выгуливает собак из приюта is a relative clause (a subordinate clause that describes the noun девушку‑волонтёра).
In Russian, relative clauses introduced by который / которая / которое / которые are always separated by a comma from the main clause:
- Я вижу дом, который мне нравится.
- Он встретил человека, которого давно искал.
So the comma before которая is obligatory.
The relative pronoun который must agree in gender and number with the noun it refers to.
- Antecedent here: девушку‑волонтёра → девушка‑волонтёр (feminine singular)
- So we use которая (feminine singular nominative).
Using который (masculine) would be grammatically wrong here.
As for что:
- что can sometimes introduce relative clauses, but it’s mostly used:
- after words like всё, то, то, что
- in some colloquial patterns
- After a concrete noun like девушка, standard Russian uses который/которая, not что.
So которая is the correct and standard choice.
Both involve walking dogs, but they differ in emphasis:
- гулять с собакой / с собаками – to walk with a dog/dogs, neutral, just being out for a walk together.
- выгуливать собаку / собак – to take the dog(s) out specifically so they can walk, exercise, relieve themselves; often sounds like carrying out a responsibility or service (dog‑walking as a task).
In the context of a волонтёр and собаки из приюта, выгуливать собак fits very well: it emphasizes that she is performing the chore of walking the shelter dogs.
Собака (dog) is feminine, animate.
Forms:
- Nominative singular: собака
- Nominative plural: собаки
- Genitive plural: собак
- Accusative plural (animate): собак
For animate nouns in the plural, the accusative form = genitive form. So собак is:
- Morphologically: the same shape for genitive plural and accusative plural
- Syntactically here: the direct object of выгуливает, so it is accusative plural.
You cannot use собаке / собакам here; those are dative forms (to/for the dog(s)), which do not fit as direct objects of выгуливать.
Из means from / out of and always takes the genitive case.
- Nominative: приют – shelter
- Genitive singular: приюта
So:
- из приюта – from (the) shelter
Here it indicates the origin or affiliation of the dogs: they are dogs from the shelter (shelter dogs), not just dogs that happen to be near a shelter.
Compare:
- с работы – from work
- из школы – from (the) school
- из парка – from (inside) the park
Yes, Russian word order is relatively flexible, and you can say:
- Возле парка я встречаю девушку‑волонтёра, которая выгуливает собак из приюта.
- Я встречаю возле парка девушку‑волонтёра, которая выгуливает собак из приюта.
- Я возле парка встречаю девушку‑волонтёра, которая выгуливает собак из приюта.
All are grammatically correct and have essentially the same basic meaning.
Differences are mostly in rhythm and slight emphasis:
- Starting with возле парка slightly highlights the place first.
- Putting возле парка after встречаю can feel more neutral in everyday speech.
Crucially, которая still clearly refers to девушку‑волонтёра, so the relative clause attachment does not change.
Russian distinguishes these words mainly by age and social perception:
- девочка – girl, typically a child
- девушка – girl / young woman (roughly teen to about early 30s, unmarried connotation historically, but today mostly just “young woman”)
- женщина – woman (adult woman, neutral or older, no focus on youth)
So девушка‑волонтёр suggests a young woman volunteer, not a child and not just any woman regardless of age.