Breakdown of Они спорят о спорте, а не о политике.
не
not
а
and (contrastive)
они
they
о
about (о, об, обо)
спорить
to argue
спорт
sport
политика
politics
Questions & Answers about Они спорят о спорте, а не о политике.
Why do спорт and политика end in -е here?
Because they follow the preposition о (about), which requires the Prepositional case to show the topic of speech. For most masculine nouns ending in a consonant like спорт, and feminine nouns ending in -а like политика, the Prepositional case is formed by adding or changing the ending to -е (making them спорте and политике).
Why do we use о here instead of об?
You use об when the following word starts with a vowel sound (like об Анне - about Anna). Because both спорте and политике start with consonant sounds, we use the standard о.
Why does the sentence use а to mean "and"? Couldn't we use и?
In Russian, а is used to show contrast. It translates to "and" or "but" when you are contrasting two things against each other. Here, it contrasts arguing about sport versus politics. If you used и (the standard "and"), it would mean they are arguing about both topics, rather than one instead of the other.
How do I know спорят means "are arguing" and not just "argue"?
Russian doesn't have a separate continuous tense like English does. The single present tense verb спорят means both "they argue" (in general) and "they are arguing" (right now). The context of the sentence tells us they are currently having this debate.
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