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Questions & Answers about Я поясну рецепт.
What does the pronoun Я mean in this sentence?
It means "I". In Ukrainian, Я is the first person singular pronoun, corresponding directly to the English "I".
What is the tense and aspect of the verb поясну?
The verb поясну is the first person singular form of the perfective verb пояснити. Although its form resembles the present tense, perfective verbs in Ukrainian indicate a completed action that will occur in the future. So поясну essentially means "I will explain."
What is the infinitive form of поясну?
The infinitive is пояснити, which translates to "to explain."
Why is рецепт unchanged in the sentence—does it show any marking for the object?
рецепт serves as the direct object in the sentence. For inanimate masculine nouns like рецепт, the nominative and accusative cases have identical forms. Hence, no additional marking is necessary even though it is functioning as the object.
How does the word order of this Ukrainian sentence compare to that of English?
The sentence follows a typical Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure—Я (subject) comes first, followed by поясну (verb) and then рецепт (object). This ordering is very similar to standard English sentence structure.
Why might the verb form поясну be confusing when comparing present and future meanings?
In Ukrainian, perfective verbs like пояснити do not have a distinct present tense form; instead, they use forms that resemble the present but clearly indicate a future, completed action. That’s why поясну is used to mean "I will explain" rather than a habitual or ongoing present action.