Breakdown of Банк открыт, а аптека закрыта.
а
and (contrastive)
банк
bank
аптека
pharmacy
открыт
open (short form)
Questions & Answers about Банк открыт, а аптека закрыта.
Why does the sentence use а for "and" instead of и?
The word а is a special connecting word that shows a contrast between two things. While и simply joins similar things together, а is used when you are comparing two different situations. Because the bank is open but the pharmacy is closed, Russian uses а to highlight this difference. It can be translated as "and," "but," or "whereas."
Why doesn't the word for open (открыт) have a normal adjective ending like -ый?
Words like открыт (open) and закрыт (closed) are used here in a special "short form." In Russian, these short forms are often used to describe temporary states or conditions. Instead of just describing the noun as a regular adjective would, they act like the main state or verb of the sentence.
Why do the endings for "open" and "closed" look different (открыт vs закрыта)?
Like normal adjectives, these short-form words must match the gender of the noun they describe. Банк is a masculine word, so it uses the masculine short form открыт (which ends in a consonant). Аптека is a feminine word, so the word for closed gets the feminine -а ending, becoming закрыта.
Where is the verb "is" in Банк открыт?
In the present tense, Russian almost always drops the verb "to be" (am, is, or are). You just place the subject and the describing word side by side. So, Банк открыт literally translates to "Bank open," but it means "The bank is open."