Questions & Answers about Где бананы и конфеты?
Both бананы and конфеты end in -ы. Do masculine and feminine words use the same plural ending?
Yes! The masculine word банан (banana) ends in a hard consonant, so we just add -ы to make it plural (бананы). The feminine word конфета (candy) ends in -а, which we replace with -ы to get конфеты. So, both hard masculine and feminine nouns share the -ы ending in the plural.
Why is there no word for "are" in this Russian sentence?
In Russian, the present tense of the verb "to be" (am, is, are) is almost always skipped. Because of this, "Where are the bananas and candies?" translates literally as "Where bananas and candies?" (Где бананы и конфеты?).
Why do these plurals end in -ы instead of -и?
You use -ы for most standard hard masculine and feminine nouns. Sometimes, you have to use -и instead because of a special spelling rule: you can never write -ы after the letters г, к, х, ж, ч, ш, щ. Since the last consonant in банан is н and in конфета is т, that spelling rule doesn't apply here, and we safely use -ы.
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