Breakdown of Pisicile nu dorm în patul mic.
pisica
the cat
patul
the bed
nu
no / not
mic
small
dormi
to sleep
în
in
Questions & Answers about Pisicile nu dorm în patul mic.
Why is the verb form just dorm here? Don't many -i verbs have a special ending?
The verb here is a dormi (to sleep), which is a Conjugation 4 verb ending in -i. Unlike some other -i verbs that take the -esc suffix (like a citi becoming ele citesc), a dormi is regular and does not use this suffix. For the 'they' form, you simply use the stem, making it ele dorm (they sleep).
How do we get pisicile from the basic word for cat?
The basic word for cat is pisică (feminine). To make it plural (cats), the ending changes to -i, giving us pisici. Finally, to say 'the cats', we attach the feminine plural definite article -le to the very end, resulting in pisicile.
Why does patul have the definite article -ul here? I thought we drop the word for 'the' after the preposition în.
You have a great memory! Usually, after simple prepositions like în (in), we drop the definite article if the noun stands alone (for example, în pat translates to 'in the bed'). However, there is an important exception: because we added the adjective mic (small) to describe the bed, the noun gets its definite article back. So it must be în patul mic.
Why is the adjective mic and not mică?
Adjectives in Romanian must match the gender and number of the noun they describe. The word pat (bed) is a neuter noun. In the singular, neuter nouns behave exactly like masculine nouns, so we use the masculine/neuter singular form of the adjective, which is mic.
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