Question 1

Why do плохо and отлично end in "о"?

Accepted Answer

These are adverbs of manner, which describe how you do an action (like speaking). In Russian, you can often turn an adjective (like плохой for "bad" or отличный for "excellent") into an adverb by changing the ending to -о. So, плохо means "poorly" and отлично means "excellently."

Question 2

Why is it по-русски with a hyphen instead of just the adjective for Russian?

Accepted Answer

When talking about speaking a language with the verb говорить (to speak), Russian uses a special adverb form that starts with по- and ends in -и. It literally means "in the Russian way." That is why it has a hyphen and doesn't look like a standard adjective.

Question 3

The translation says "and", so why does the sentence use а instead of и?

Accepted Answer

The word а is a contrastive conjunction. It can mean "and" or "but" depending on the context, and it is used to compare or contrast two different things. Here, it highlights the contrast between how I speak (poorly) and how you speak (excellently). If you used и, it wouldn't emphasize this difference.

Question 4

Could I put плохо right after говорю, like Я говорю плохо по-русски?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can! Russian word order is flexible. Putting плохо at the end of the clause places a little more emphasis on it. This sounds very natural here because you are setting up a direct contrast with отлично at the very end of the sentence.

Я говорю по-русски плохо, а ты говоришь отлично.

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