Word
Волейбол — мой любимый спорт.
Meaning
Volleyball is my favourite sport.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Волейбол — мой любимый спорт.
мой
my (мой, моя, моё) / mine
спорт
sport
любимый
favourite
волейбол
volleyball
Questions & Answers about Волейбол — мой любимый спорт.
Why is there a dash (—) in the middle of the sentence instead of the word "is"?
In Russian, the present tense of the verb "to be" (is, am, are) is normally skipped. When you connect two nouns to say one thing is another, like волейбол (volleyball) and спорт (sport), you write a dash (—) between them to take the place of "is".
Why do we use мой here instead of моя or моё?
The word мой (my) must match the gender of the noun it belongs to. Here, it describes спорт (sport). Since спорт ends in a consonant, it is a masculine noun, so we use the masculine form мой.
Does любимый also change its ending based on the noun?
Could I swap the two halves and say "Мой любимый спорт — волейбол"?
Yes, you absolutely can. Russian word order is very flexible. Swapping them means "My favorite sport is volleyball," which is perfectly natural and just shifts the focus slightly, exactly like it does in English.