Breakdown of Студенты уважают строгого и серьёзного учителя.
и
and
студент
student (m)
учитель
teacher
строгий
strict
уважать
to respect
серьёзный
serious
Questions & Answers about Студенты уважают строгого и серьёзного учителя.
Why do the adjectives строгого and серьёзного end in -ого instead of their usual dictionary endings?
They describe the teacher (учителя), who is the direct object receiving the action of the verb уважают (respect). This puts them in the accusative case. For masculine animate nouns (people and animals), adjectives take the special endings -ого or -его.
I see a г in those -ого endings. Is it pronounced like a hard G?
No, it is actually pronounced like an English V! In Russian, the grammatical endings -ого and -его are always pronounced with a V sound. So строгого sounds like "stro-ga-va".
Why does the masculine noun учителя end in -я here?
The dictionary form is учитель, which ends in a soft sign. Because a teacher is a living person (animate), its accusative case form copies the genitive case ending. For soft masculine nouns, that ending is -я.
How do we know for sure that the students respect the teacher, and not the other way around?
Two reasons! First, студенты is in the nominative case (the subject), while учителя is in the accusative case (the object). Second, the verb уважают ends in -ют, which is the form for "they", matching the plural students.
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