Мой дедушка — самый добрый человек в нашей семье.

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Breakdown of Мой дедушка — самый добрый человек в нашей семье.

• в: in
• человек: the person
• дедушка: the grandfather

Questions & Answers about Мой дедушка — самый добрый человек в нашей семье.

Why is there a dash in Мой дедушка — самый добрый человек в нашей семье?

In Russian, a dash is often used in the present tense when one noun phrase is being equated with another, where English would use is.

So:

• Мой дедушка = My grandfather
• самый добрый человек = the kindest person

Russian usually does not use a present-tense verb meaning is in this kind of sentence, so the dash helps show the relationship:

• Мой дедушка — самый добрый человек...
• literally: My grandfather — the kindest person...

In casual writing, the dash is sometimes omitted, but in standard written Russian it is very common here.

Why is дедушка ending in -а if it means grandfather, a male person?

This is a very common point of confusion. Дедушка refers to a male person, but grammatically it belongs to a group of masculine nouns that happen to end in -а or -я.

So:

• дедушка = masculine
• мой дедушка = my grandfather using the masculine form мой

Even though the ending looks like many feminine nouns, agreement follows the meaning and grammatical gender, not just the ending.

Other similar masculine nouns include:

• папа = dad
• дядя = uncle
• мужчина = man