Breakdown of Она живёт в современном городе.
она
she / it (for a feminine noun)
город
city
жить
to live
в
in / to (direction)
современный
modern
Questions & Answers about Она живёт в современном городе.
Why does the adjective современном end in -ом?
Because it describes городе (city), which is in the prepositional case to show location. In Russian, masculine and neuter adjectives in the prepositional case usually take the ending -ом (or -ем after certain soft letters). Since the dictionary form is современный, it takes the standard -ом ending here.
Why is it городе instead of город?
The word is answering the question "where?" using the preposition в (in). This requires the prepositional case. For most masculine nouns ending in a hard consonant, like город, you simply add -е to the end to make it городе.
Wait, doesn't the verb жить (to live) end in a vowel? Where does the -в- in живёт come from?
That is a great catch! The verb жить is slightly irregular. When you conjugate it, a -в- pops up in the root for all present tense forms. So instead of taking standard endings directly onto the vowel, it becomes живёт for "he/she/it lives", живу for "I live", and so on.
Does the letter ё in живёт mean the stress is on the second syllable?
Yes! The letter ё (which sounds like "yo") is very helpful for learners because it is always stressed. Whenever you see a ё in a Russian word, you know exactly where to put the emphasis.
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