Breakdown of Aceasta este echipa de bowling a cinci studenți pasionați.
fi
to be (sunt, ești, este, suntem, sunteți, sunt)
studentul
the student
cinci
five
de
of / to, near (after se apropia)
acesta
this one
echipa
the team
pasionat
passionate (about), keen (on)
bowlingul
the bowling
a
of (genitive marker before a numeral)
Questions & Answers about Aceasta este echipa de bowling a cinci studenți pasionați.
Why do we use a in front of cinci to say "of five"?
Most cardinal numbers (like cinci) don't change their endings to show the Genitive case (possession). To work around this, Romanian uses the invariable preposition a right before the number to mean "of" or to act like the English "'s".
Is the a in a cinci studenți the possessive article agreeing with the feminine noun echipa?
No, and this is a very common trap! The possessive articles (al, a, ai, ale) change based on the gender and number of the possessed object. However, the a used for the Genitive of numbers is a fixed preposition. Even if the possessed object were masculine plural, like "the shoes of five students", it would still be pantofii a cinci studenți, never ale.
Why don't we say cinci de studenți?
As a quick refresher: for numbers from 1 to 19, the number attaches directly to the plural noun (cinci studenți). You only insert the preposition de between the number and the noun for numbers 20 and above (for example, douăzeci de studenți).
Why does the sentence start with Aceasta instead of Acesta?
Aceasta is the feminine form of the demonstrative pronoun "this" (or "this one"). It has to be feminine here because it points forward to echipa (the team), which is a feminine noun.
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