Breakdown of Её любимые ученики ещё маленькие: им по семь-восемь лет.
Questions & Answers about Её любимые ученики ещё маленькие: им по семь-восемь лет.
Её любимые ученики is in the nominative plural.
- ученики – nominative plural of ученик (student, pupil)
- любимые – nominative plural adjective agreeing with ученики
- её – invariable possessive pronoun (her); it doesn’t change form
Grammatically this is the subject of the sentence: Её любимые ученики (кто?) – Her favorite students…
маленькие is a full-form adjective in the nominative plural, agreeing with ученики.
In Russian, a predicate adjective (what something is) agrees in gender, number and case with the subject:
- Subject: ученики – plural
- Predicate adjective: маленькие – plural
So Её любимые ученики ещё маленькие literally = Her favorite students are still small.
Here маленькие functions like an adjective used as a predicate (similar to English are small).
In this sentence ещё means still / not yet grown up.
Ещё маленькие suggests: they are small now, and we expect they will be bigger/older later.
Position: adverbs like ещё typically stand before the word they modify:
- ещё маленькие – still small
- contrast: уже большие – already big
In present tense, Russian normally drops the verb “to be” in equational sentences (X = Y):
- Ученики маленькие. – literally: Students small. (meaning Students are small.)
- Only in the past or future do you use быть:
- Ученики были маленькие. – were small
- Ученики будут маленькие. – will be small
So есть is omitted in modern standard Russian in the present tense here.
In Russian, a colon often introduces an explanation, reason, or clarification for the previous clause.
- Её любимые ученики ещё маленькие: им по семь-восемь лет.
- First part: a statement – Her favorite students are still small.
- Second part: an explanation – because they’re only seven or eight years old.
You could translate the colon as something like “because”, “as”, or just a new sentence in English.
Russian expresses age with the dative case of the person + the number of years:
- Мне 20 лет. – I am 20 years old. (literally: To me [there are] 20 years.)
- Ему 5 лет. – He is 5 years old.
Here:
- им = dative plural of они (to them)
- им … лет = they are … years old
So Им по семь-восемь лет literally means: To them, each has 7–8 years (of age).
With numbers, по + dative often expresses distribution: each / apiece.
- Детям по пять конфет. – The children get five candies each.
- Им по семь-восемь лет. – They are about seven or eight years old each.
So по here doesn’t translate directly into English as a single word; it just signals that the number applies to each member of the group.
The form after numbers depends on the last digit of the number:
- 1 → год: 1 год, 21 год
- 2–4 → года: 2 года, 3 года, 24 года
- 5–9, 0, and 11–14 → лет: 5 лет, 8 лет, 10 лет, 11 лет, 12 лет
семь (7) and восемь (8) are both in the 5–9 group, so they require лет:
- семь лет
- восемь лет
Therefore семь-восемь лет is correct.
семь-восемь лет means “about seven or eight years old”, i.e., a small range.
It usually implies something like:
- Some of them are 7, some are 8,
or - Their ages are roughly in the 7–8 range.
It does not mean 7+8=15; it’s an age range, not a sum.
The hyphen joins two numbers to indicate a range or approximation:
- семь-восемь лет – about 7–8 years old
- два-три дня – two or three days
It’s similar to using “7–8” or “7 or 8” in English.
Yes, grammatically you can say:
- Её ученикам по семь-восемь лет.
This is also dative plural (ученикам), and it means the same: Her students are seven or eight years old.
Difference in feel:
- Им по семь-восемь лет. – Uses a pronoun, very natural after Её любимые ученики…; emphasizes they.
- Её ученикам по семь-восемь лет. – Repeats the noun students, slightly heavier style, but still correct.
In the original context, using им avoids repeating ученики.
Not in this exact sentence, because there is no explicit subject before it.
- её любимые ученики – her favorite students
- свои любимые ученики – one’s own favorite students (reflexive: belongs to the subject of the clause)
Свой refers back to the grammatical subject of the clause. For example:
- Учительница любит своих учеников. – The (female) teacher loves her (own) students.
Here своих clearly refers to учительница.
But in Её любимые ученики ещё маленькие, the subject is Её любимые ученики themselves, so свои ученики would mean their own students, which changes the meaning. Её unambiguously points to some other female person (the owner).
The default position of adjectives in Russian is before the noun:
- любимые ученики – favorite students
Adjectives can come after the noun, but then they often sound more bookish, poetic, or contrastive, or they are short-form adjectives:
- ученики любимые – can sound like the students (who are) loved, with a slight emphasis on любимые, and is less neutral.
In neutral modern prose, любимые ученики (adjective before noun) is the normal, most natural order.