Learn Hardcore Russian: Ребёнок любит кормить уток в парке.

Ребёнок is masculine in Russian, even though it can refer to a boy or a girl.
In this sentence, Ребёнок is in the nominative case, because it is the subject of the sentence — the one doing the loving and feeding.

So the structure is:

Ребёнок (who?) – subject
любит (what does he/she do?) – verb
кормить уток в парке – what he/she likes to do.

Why is it любит кормить, not something like любит кормила? How does любить + infinitive work?

In Russian, to say that someone likes doing something in general, you use:

любить + infinitive

Here:

любит = “(he/she) likes / loves” (3rd person singular of любить)
кормить = infinitive “to feed”

So Ребёнок любит кормить… = “The child likes to feed…” or “The child likes feeding…”.

You cannot say любит кормила here, because:

кормила is a past tense form (“she fed”),
After любить in this meaning, you need the infinitive, not a past tense verb.

Why is it уток and not утки? I thought “ducks” is утки.

Dictionary forms:

утка – a duck (nominative singular)
утки – ducks (nominative plural)
уток – of ducks / (some) ducks (genitive plural)

In this sentence, уток is used after кормить. For animate nouns, the accusative plural (object form) is the same as the genitive plural:

Nominative plural: утки – “ducks” (as subject)
Accusative plural (object, animate): уток – “ducks” (as object of “feed”)

So:

Кто кормит? Ребёнок. – “Who feeds?” The child.
Кого кормит? Уток. – “Whom does he feed?” Ducks.

Grammatically this is accusative plural, but its form is the same as the genitive plural (уток).

Could we say кормить утки instead of кормить уток?

No, кормить утки is incorrect in standard Russian.

Утки is nominative plural (“ducks” as subject), not the correct form for a direct object when the noun is animate.
After кормить (“to feed”), the ducks are the direct object, so you need accusative plural. For animate nouns, that form looks like the genitive plural: уток.

Correct patterns:

Ребёнок кормит уток. – The child feeds (the) ducks.
Утки плавают в пруду. – Ducks are swimming in the pond. (Here утки is the subject, so nominative is correct.)

What about кормить уткам? Does that exist, and what would it mean?

Кормить уткам uses dative plural (уткам), and it sounds unnatural or incomplete by itself. It would literally mean something like “to feed for the ducks” or “to give something as food to the ducks”, but you’d need an explicit object (what you’re giving):

Кормить хлеб уткам. – To feed bread to the ducks.

In normal speech, you usually say:

Кормить уток хлебом. – To feed the ducks with bread.

So in your original sentence, because we’re talking about whom the child feeds, уток (accusative plural / genitive plural form) is the correct choice.

Why is it в парке and not в парк? What’s the difference?

The preposition в can take two different cases with different meanings:

в + accusative = motion into / to a place
- в парк – into the park / to the park
в + prepositional = location in a place
- в парке – in the park

In your sentence, the child is already in the park while feeding ducks, so we use в парке (prepositional case = location).

Compare:

Ребёнок идёт в парк. – The child is going to the park.
Ребёнок любит кормить уток в парке. – The child likes feeding ducks in the park.

Can I change the word order? For example, can I say Ребёнок в парке любит кормить уток or В парке ребёнок любит кормить уток?

Yes, Russian word order is flexible, and all these versions are grammatically correct. The main differences are in emphasis and focus:

Ребёнок любит кормить уток в парке.
Neutral, simple statement: what the child likes to do in the park.
Ребёнок в парке любит кормить уток.
Slight focus on “in the park” as a characteristic of the child’s habit; sounds like “When he’s in the park, he likes feeding ducks.”
В парке ребёнок любит кормить уток.
Focus on “In the park” (contrast with other places): “In the park, the child likes feeding ducks (maybe elsewhere he does something else).”

So you can reorder most parts, but the basic neutral word order is Subject – Verb – Object – Place as in the original.

What is the difference between кормить and покормить here? Could the sentence be Ребёнок любит покормить уток в парке?

Кормить and покормить form an aspect pair:

кормить – imperfective (“to feed” as a process, habitual action, no focus on completion)
покормить – perfective (“to feed” once, with focus on finishing the action)

With любить, the imperfective infinitive is most natural for a general habit:

Ребёнок любит кормить уток в парке.
= He likes feeding ducks in general, as an activity.

Ребёнок любит покормить уток в парке is possible but sounds more colloquial and often implies occasional, complete actions (“He likes to go and feed the ducks now and then”), with more focus on doing it as a single whole event.

For a textbook, neutral description of a hobby or habit, любить + imperfective infinitive (кормить) is the standard pattern.

How is Ребёнок pronounced, and why is there ё instead of е?

Ребёнок is pronounced approximately like [rye-BYÓ-nak], with stress on ё.

Key points:

ё is always stressed and sounds like “yo” in “yogurt”.
The consonants before е, ё, и, ю, я are usually soft (palatalized). So р and б in ре- and бё- are soft.

About spelling:

In printed Russian, ё is often written simply as е (for example, ребенок).
But the correct full spelling with the dots is Ребёнок, and dictionaries usually indicate it that way.

Is Ребёнок always masculine? What if the child is a girl?

Grammatically, Ребёнок is masculine in Russian, regardless of the real child’s sex.

So you say:

Этот ребёнок маленький. – This child is small. (masculine adjective маленький)

Even if the child is a girl, grammar still treats ребёнок as masculine. If you specifically want to say the child is a girl or a boy, you use:

мальчик – boy
девочка – girl

But in your sentence, Ребёнок любит кормить уток в парке, the verb любит is the same for masculine and feminine subjects anyway, so you don’t see the gender difference in the verb form.

Why does любит end in -ит? How is this verb conjugated?

Любить is a second-conjugation verb in Russian. Its present tense forms are:

я люблю – I love / like
ты любишь – you love (singular, informal)
он / она / оно любит – he / she / it loves
мы любим – we love
вы любите – you love (plural or formal)
они любят – they love

In your sentence, the subject is Ребёнок (3rd person singular), so we use любит.

Russian has no articles. How do I know if this means “the child likes to feed the ducks” or “a child likes to feed ducks”?

Russian doesn’t have a / an / the, so the sentence Ребёнок любит кормить уток в парке can be translated in several ways, depending on context:

The child likes to feed the ducks in the park.
A child likes to feed ducks in the park.

Without extra context, English speakers usually choose “The child…” as the most natural translation, but Russian itself doesn’t specify whether the child and the ducks are specific or not. Context in a larger text (earlier sentences, situation) would normally make that clear.

What is the plural of ребёнок, and would it change the rest of the sentence?

The plural of ребёнок is дети (“children”), which is an irregular plural.

If you make the subject plural, other parts of the sentence must agree:

Дети любят кормить уток в парке.
- Дети – plural subject
- любят – 3rd person plural of любить

The rest (кормить уток в парке) stays the same, because it does not depend on the subject’s number.