Questions & Answers about Без отопления в комнате холодно.
Why isn’t there a verb like есть or быть in this sentence?
Russian often uses impersonal sentences with words like холодно, жарко, темно, скучно to describe a state. In the present tense, Russian normally omits “to be”:
- В комнате холодно. = It’s cold in the room. You can add быть in other tenses:
- Без отопления в комнате было холодно. (was cold)
- Без отопления в комнате будет холодно. (will be cold)
What part of speech is холодно here? Is it an adverb?
In this use, холодно is a predicative word (often called a “category of state” word). It behaves like the main predicate of an impersonal sentence:
- холодно = it is cold / it feels cold (in some place) It looks like an adverb, but grammatically it functions as the sentence’s main “state predicate.”
Why is it без отопления and not без отопление?
The preposition без requires the genitive case (Genitive = “of / without”):
- отопление (nominative)
- без отопления (genitive) So без + Genitive is the rule.