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Questions & Answers about Я нічого не знаю про лютий.
What does нічого mean, and why does it come before не знаю?
Нічого is the negative pronoun “nothing,” derived from ніщо. In Ukrainian, you pair нічого with the negative particle не plus a verb to say “not know anything.” The usual word order is нічого не знаю (“nothing not know”), literally I nothing don’t know.
Why do we need both нічого and не? Isn’t one negation enough?
Slavic languages typically use multiple negatives for emphasis. Нічого alone means “nothing,” but Ukrainian grammar requires the negative particle не on the verb (знаю) to complete the negation: нічого не знаю = “I don’t know anything.”
Could I say Я не знаю нічого про лютий instead of Я нічого не знаю про лютий?
Yes, that word order is grammatically correct and still means the same. However, Я нічого не знаю про лютий is more common and sounds more natural to native speakers.
What case is лютий in after the preposition про?
Про (“about”) takes the accusative case for inanimate nouns. For masculine inanimate nouns like лютий (the month of February), the accusative singular form is identical to the nominative, so it stays лютий.
Why isn’t лютий capitalized here? In English we write “February” with a capital letter.
In Ukrainian, names of months are not capitalized unless they begin a sentence. So February = лютий, all lowercase.
Why isn’t there an article before лютий, like the February in English?
Ukrainian does not have articles (no “a,” “an,” or “the”). Definiteness or indefiniteness is understood from context, so you simply say про лютий for “about February.”
Can you drop Я in this sentence?
Yes. Ukrainian is a pro-drop language, so you can say Нічого не знаю про лютий and still mean “I don’t know anything about February.”
What part of speech is лютий here? I know лютий can also mean “fierce.”
Here лютий is a noun (the month February). As an adjective, лютий means “fierce” or “severe,” but in the context про лютий it’s clearly the month’s name.
Could we use the preposition о instead of про?
While о can mean “about” in set expressions or before vowels (e.g., думати о мені), the standard colloquial preposition for “about” in most contexts—including months—is про. So про лютий is the natural choice.