Questions & Answers about Сок и кофе там.
Why do we use и instead of а in this sentence?
и means "and" and is used to simply join two items together in a list, like сок (juice) and кофе (coffee). You would use а (which means "and" or "but") if you were showing a contrast, for example: Сок is here, а кофе is there.
I don't see a word for "are" in the Russian sentence. Where did it go?
In the present tense, Russian almost always skips the verb "to be" (am, is, are). The sentence literally translates to "Juice and coffee there," and the word "are" is simply understood.
How do we know it means "the juice" and "the coffee" if there is no word for "the"?
Russian does not use articles like "a", "an", or "the". Depending on the situation, сок can mean "juice", "a juice", or "the juice". Here, the English translation adds "the" to make it sound natural in English.
Will the ending of кофе change if we use it differently in a sentence?
No, кофе is a borrowed word in Russian and is indeclinable. This means its ending never changes, no matter how it is used in a sentence. It will always be кофе.