Breakdown of Один из маркеров уже почти не пишет, зато второй ещё пригодится для доски.
писать
to write
не
not
для
for
из
of
Questions & Answers about Один из маркеров уже почти не пишет, зато второй ещё пригодится для доски.
Why is it один из маркеров? Why is маркеров in that form?
Because из normally takes the genitive case.
So:
- один = one
- из = out of / from among
- маркеров = genitive plural of маркер
So один из маркеров literally means one of the markers.
This is a very common Russian pattern:
- один из студентов = one of the students
- одна из книг = one of the books
- одно из окон = one of the windows
The word один changes to match the gender of the thing being talked about. Since маркер is masculine, we get один.
Why does the sentence say the marker writes — пишет? In English a marker doesn’t usually write by itself.
In Russian, it is completely natural to say that a pen, pencil, or marker writes:
- Ручка не пишет = The pen doesn’t write.
- Карандаш плохо пишет = The pencil writes badly.
- Маркер уже не пишет = The marker doesn’t write anymore.
English often prefers works, writes well, or has run dry, but Russian commonly uses писать with writing tools. So this is very normal idiomatic Russian.