Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж за музыканта.

My sister wants to marry a musician.

Breakdown of Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж за музыканта.

• мой: my
• сестра: the sister
• хотеть: to want
• музыкант: the musician
• выйти замуж за: to get married to

Questions & Answers about Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж за музыканта.

Why do we say выйти замуж here instead of just using a single verb that means “to marry”?

Russian doesn’t have one neutral verb exactly like English “to get married” that works the same for both men and women.

Instead, it uses set expressions:

• выйти замуж (за кого?) – literally “to go out for a husband”, used only for a woman getting married.
• жениться (на ком?) – used only for a man getting married.
• пожениться – “to get married (to each other)”, used for a couple together:
  Они хотят пожениться. – “They want to get married.”

So in this sentence, since the subject is сестра (a woman), Russian uses the female pattern выйти замуж. There is no single, gender-neutral verb that would replace it here.

What does выйти замуж literally mean?

Literally, the parts mean:

• выйти – “to go out”, “to exit” (perfective)
• замуж – historically from за мужа (“for / behind a husband”)

Originally, it referred to a woman leaving her parents’ home and going “behind / for a husband”. Over time it became a fixed idiom simply meaning “to get married” (for a woman).

Today, Russian speakers don’t usually feel the literal “go out” meaning here; they just understand выйти замуж as a set phrase “to get married (as a bride)”.

Is замуж a noun? What case is it?

Syntactically замуж is no longer felt as a normal noun form. It’s a fixed, indeclinable word used only in a few expressions:

• выйти замуж (за кого?) – to get married (for a woman)
• colloquial: хотеть замуж – to want to get married (for a woman)

Historically, замуж comes from за мужа (“for a husband”, accusative case after за), but in modern Russian:

• You cannot change or decline it: there is no замужу, замужем as forms of the same word.
• There is a different word замужем (with -ем) which is a short-form adjective meaning “married” (about a woman):
  • Она замужем. – She is married.
  • Она хочет выйти замуж. – She wants to get married.

So: замуж itself is best thought of as a fossilized adverb-like form, not an active noun in a normal case paradigm.

Why is it выйти and not выходить here? What does the perfective aspect add?

Russian has aspect pairs:

• выходить – imperfective, “to go out”, “to be going out (habitually / in progress)”
• выйти – perfective, “to go out (once, as a completed event)”

With verbs like хотеть (“to want”), Russian almost always uses a perfective infinitive when talking about a single, concrete action that you want to complete:

• Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж.
  She wants to (ultimately) get married (one completed event).

Using выходить here (хочет выходить замуж) would sound wrong or at best very odd, as if she wants to be regularly entering into marriages.

So хочет выйти = “she wants to perform this one-time action (get married)”.

Why do we say за музыканта? What does за mean in this context?

After выйти замуж, Russian uses за + accusative case to introduce the person you marry:

• выйти замуж за кого? – to marry whom?
  • за музыканта
  • за врача
  • за него

Here, за doesn’t mean “behind” or “for” in a spatial sense. It’s part of the fixed pattern замуж за кого, roughly corresponding to English “to marry a … / to get married to a …”.

Compare:

• Она вышла замуж за музыканта. – She married a musician.
• Она хочет выйти замуж за своего друга. – She wants to marry her friend.

So in this construction за is required by the idiom выйти замуж за кого.

Why is it музыканта and not just музыкант?

Музыканта is the accusative singular form of музыкант (“musician”).

For masculine animate nouns in Russian:

• Accusative = Genitive (not Nominative)
  • Nominative: музыкант – “a musician” (subject)
  • Genitive: музыканта
  • Accusative (animate): музыканта

So:

• Кто? Что? (Nominative):
  Музыкант играет. – The musician is playing.
• Кого? Что? (Accusative, direct object, animate):
  Я вижу музыканта. – I see the musician.

In за музыканта, the preposition за with this meaning takes the accusative (за кого?), so we need the accusative form музыканта, not the nominative музыкант.

Can a man say выйти замуж?

No. Выйти замуж is used only for women.

The usual patterns are:

• For a woman:

  • Она хочет выйти замуж (за кого?).
  • Она вышла замуж за музыканта.

• For a man:

  • Он хочет жениться (на ком?).
    • Он хочет жениться на музыкантке. – He wants to marry a (female) musician.
  • Он женился на своей подруге. – He married his (female) friend.

• For both together (mutual action):

  • Они хотят пожениться. – They want to get married (to each other).
  • Они поженились. – They got married.

So a man would not say я хочу выйти замуж; he would say я хочу жениться.

Can I leave out за музыканта and just say Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж?

Yes.

• Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж.
  – “My sister wants to get married.” (in general, not specifying to whom)

Adding за музыканта gives more information:

• Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж за музыканта.
  – “…she wants to marry a musician.”

So:

• with за + кого – you specify whom she wants to marry;
• without it – you state only that she wants marriage, with no specific person mentioned.

Is the word order выйти замуж за музыканта fixed? Can I move замуж or за музыканта?

The most neutral and common order is exactly as in the sentence:

• Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж за музыканта.

However, Russian word order is relatively flexible, and you can hear:

• Моя сестра хочет выйти за музыканта замуж.
• Моя сестра хочет замуж выйти за музыканта. (more colloquial / expressive)

In these variants:

• The meaning doesn’t change.
• The rhythm or emphasis can shift slightly (for example, putting за музыканта earlier may highlight whom she wants to marry).

But for learners, it’s best to stick with the standard pattern:

выйти замуж за кого

What is the difference between замуж and замужем?

They look similar but are different words with different grammar and meaning:

1. замуж

   • Used with a verb of movement / change:
     • выйти замуж – to get married (for a woman)
     • (colloquial) Она хочет замуж. – She wants to get married.
   • Describes the action / event of getting married.

2. замужем

   • Short-form adjective, used with быть (often omitted) to describe a state:
     • Она замужем. – She is married.
     • Она давно замужем. – She has been married for a long time.

Compare:

• Она хочет выйти замуж. – She wants to get married. (future event)
• Она уже замужем. – She is already married. (current state)

Could we say the same idea using жениться instead of выйти замуж?

Not with сестра as the subject, because жениться is grammatically and culturally used for men.

You can, however, rephrase the idea in a few different ways:

• Keeping the same subject:
  • Моя сестра хочет выйти замуж за музыканта. – natural and correct.
• Changing to a male subject (for жениться):
  • Мой брат хочет жениться на музыкантке. – My brother wants to marry a (female) musician.
• Focusing on the couple:
  • Моя сестра и её парень хотят пожениться. – My sister and her boyfriend want to get married.

So жениться is roughly “to get married (as the groom)”, while выйти замуж is “to get married (as the bride)”, and пожениться is “to get married (as a couple)”.