Breakdown of В конце месяца платформа прислала опрос о том, довольны ли мы подпиской и хотим ли её продлить.
Questions & Answers about В конце месяца платформа прислала опрос о том, довольны ли мы подпиской и хотим ли её продлить.
В конце месяца literally means “in the end of (the) month” and combines two cases:
- конце – prepositional singular of конец (end)
- Pattern: в конце = “at the end (of)”
- месяца – genitive singular of месяц (month)
- Pattern: конец чего? → конец месяца (end of the month)
So the structure is:
- в
- prepositional (в конце)
- followed by a noun in the genitive that depends on конец (месяца).
This is a very common pattern:
в конце года, в конце урока, в конце фильма, etc.
In Russian, verbs in the past tense agree with the grammatical gender of the subject, not with whether it’s a person or an object.
- платформа is a feminine noun (it ends in -а and is grammatically feminine).
- Past tense of прислать (to send) is:
- он прислал (masc.)
- она прислала (fem.)
- оно прислало (neut.)
- они прислали (pl.)
Since платформа behaves like она, you must say:
платформа прислала (the platform sent).
All three can translate as “sent,” but:
- послать / отправить focus on the act of sending from the sender’s side.
- прислать usually implies sending to the speaker or their group and often carries the idea that the thing arrived / was received.
In this context, платформа прислала опрос suggests:
- The platform sent the survey to us, and
- We actually received it (e.g., by email, in the app, etc.), not just that they theoretically sent it.
These words are related but not identical:
- опрос – the survey / polling process or the survey as an event or instrument in general.
- E.g. онлайн‑опрос, опрос клиентов.
- анкета – a questionnaire form you fill in (the physical or digital form with fields).
- E.g. заполнить анкету (to fill out a form).
- опросник – a more technical term for a questionnaire (list of questions), often in psychology, marketing research, etc.
Here, платформа прислала опрос means the platform sent a survey to take part in. If the emphasis were on the actual form to be filled out, you might also see платформа прислала анкету.
О том introduces an object clause that explains the content of the survey:
- опрос о чём? → о том, довольны ли мы подпиской…
- literally: “a survey about that – whether we are satisfied…”
This is a very standard pattern:
вопрос о том, как..., история о том, что..., сообщение о том, что...
You cannot simply say опрос, довольны ли мы... in neutral written Russian; it sounds incomplete or clumsy. You need о том (or at least о + some noun) to connect опрос with what it is about.
Ли is a particle that turns a statement into a yes/no question (or, here, an indirect yes/no question).
- Statement: мы довольны подпиской – we are satisfied with the subscription.
- Direct question: мы довольны подпиской? (with intonation).
- With ли: довольны ли мы подпиской?
Typical word order with ли:
- Put ли right after the first stressed element (often the verb or short adjective):
- довольны ли мы, хотим ли мы, будет ли он.
The version ли мы довольны подпиской is grammatically possible but sounds unnatural and overly bookish. Native speakers almost always use довольны ли мы... type order.
Repeating ли is the most natural and clear:
- ...довольны ли мы подпиской и хотим ли её продлить.
You can sometimes see:
- ...довольны ли мы подпиской и хотим её продлить.
This is not wrong, but:
- Repeating ли makes it very explicit that both parts are separate yes/no questions:
- (1) Are we satisfied?
- (2) Do we want to renew?
- Without the second ли, the second part can feel slightly less parallel and a bit “attached” to the first.
In careful or formal writing, repeating ли here is preferred.
Прислала is past because it describes a past event (the platform sent the survey).
However, довольны and хотим are inside an indirect question that reflects what the survey is asking at that time:
- At the end of the month, the survey is checking:
- whether we are satisfied now,
- whether we want to renew now / from this point on.
In Russian, within reported/indirect questions of this kind, you keep the actual time reference of the inner actions:
- платформа спросила, довольны ли мы – “the platform asked whether we are satisfied” (at the time of asking).
- If you wanted a clearly past perspective, you’d say:
платформа спросила, были ли мы довольны – whether we were satisfied (before).
In Russian, the present‑tense verb быть (“to be”) is usually omitted in statements:
- мы довольны подпиской literally is “we satisfied (with) the subscription”.
- The implied full form would be мы (есть) довольны подпиской, but есть is almost never used here.
So:
- мы студенты, not мы есть студенты.
- он директор, not он есть директор.
In the past and future, you must use быть:
- мы были довольны подпиской – we were satisfied.
- мы будем довольны подпиской – we will be satisfied.
Довольны is the short form of the adjective довольный (satisfied).
- Long form plural: довольные
- Used predicatively and attributively:
- довольные клиенты – satisfied customers.
- Used predicatively and attributively:
- Short form plural: довольны
- Primarily predicative: used after “to be”, describing the subject’s state:
- мы довольны, они были довольны.
- Primarily predicative: used after “to be”, describing the subject’s state:
In довольны ли мы подпиской, you are describing the state of “we,” so the short form довольны is the natural choice. Long form here (мы довольные подпиской) would sound wrong or at best very awkward.
Some Russian adjectives and verbs require the instrumental case to show what you are satisfied, happy, or dissatisfied with.
Доволен / довольна / довольны чем? → instrumental:
- доволен работой – satisfied with the work
- довольна результатом – satisfied with the result
- довольны подпиской – satisfied with the subscription
So подписка → instrumental singular подпиской.
Common similar patterns:
- удовлетворён чем, горжусь чем, довольны чем, etc.
Её refers back to подписка (feminine singular) and replaces repeating the noun:
- Full version: хотим ли мы продлить подписку.
- With pronoun: хотим ли (мы) её продлить.
Position:
- Both её продлить and продлить её are acceptable:
- хотим ли её продлить – a bit more neutral in spoken style.
- хотим ли продлить её – also correct; slightly more formal or emphatic.
In Russian, unstressed object pronouns often go before the infinitive, but putting them after is also possible and often used for emphasis or rhythm. Here both variants are fine.
Продлить is a perfective infinitive of продлевать / продлить (to extend, to renew).
- Perfective infinitive (продлить) focuses on the result / completed action:
- to (successfully) renew the subscription.
- Imperfective (продлевать) would focus on the process / repeated action:
- to be renewing, to keep renewing.
In questions like хотим ли её продлить, a perfective infinitive is natural because you are asking whether they want to carry out a single, complete renewal action.
Punctuation here follows Russian rules for subordinate clauses:
- о том, довольны ли мы подпиской и хотим ли её продлить
- о том, – we put a comma before the subordinate clause.
- The whole довольны ли мы... и хотим ли... is one subordinate clause with two coordinated predicates.
Because довольны ли мы подпиской and (мы) хотим ли её продлить are parts of the same subordinate clause joined by и, there is no comma before и.
If they were two separate subordinate clauses, you might see another comma, but here they share the same о том and form one unit.
Both exist, but they’re not the same:
- в конце месяца – at the end of the month (point in time, inside the period, at its end).
- Neutral time expression: в конце дня, в конце недели.
- к концу месяца – by the end of the month (up to that deadline).
- Emphasizes a deadline or limit: something will be done by then.
- E.g. закончим работу к концу месяца – we’ll finish the work by the end of the month.
In your sentence, the survey is actually sent at the end of the month, so в конце месяца is the natural choice.
Russian often omits obvious indirect objects when they’re clear from context. In this sentence, it’s obvious the survey was sent to the users (to us).
You can absolutely say:
- В конце месяца платформа прислала нам опрос... – “the platform sent us a survey...”
This version is slightly more explicit and is also correct. The original just leaves нам implied, which is normal and natural in Russian when the recipient is clear.