Breakdown of Девочка не студентка, она ребёнок.
не
not
она
she / it (for a feminine noun)
студентка
student (f)
девочка
girl
ребёнок
child
Questions & Answers about Девочка не студентка, она ребёнок.
Why isn't there a word for "is" in "is not a student"?
In the present tense, Russian doesn't use the verb "to be" (is, am, are). To say "is not", you just put the negation word не right before the word you are negating. Here, не goes directly before студентка.
Why do we use студентка here instead of студент?
Russian has different words for male and female students. Because девочка (girl) is female, we must use the feminine form студентка. If we were talking about a boy, it would be студент.
If the girl is female (она), why is she called a ребёнок, which is a masculine word?
Some Russian words have a fixed grammatical gender no matter who they refer to. The word ребёнок (child) is always masculine. It is perfectly normal to say она ребёнок (she is a child) without changing the gender of the word for "child".
How do I pronounce the ё in ребёнок?
The letter ё makes a "yo" sound, and it always gets the stress in a word. So, ребёнок is pronounced "re-BYO-nuhk". Keep in mind that Russians often write it as a plain е in everyday text, but the "yo" pronunciation stays the same.
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