Word
Мой брат — вегетарианец. Он хочет приготовить суп без мяса.
Meaning
My brother is a vegetarian. He wants to cook soup without meat.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Мой брат — вегетарианец. Он хочет приготовить суп без мяса.
брат
brother
он
he / it (for a masculine noun) / it (for a neuter noun)
мой
my (мой, моя, моё) / mine
суп
soup
Questions & Answers about Мой брат — вегетарианец. Он хочет приготовить суп без мяса.
Why does the word for meat change to мяса at the end of the sentence?
The preposition без (without) always requires the noun following it to be in the Genitive case. The word мясо is a neuter noun ending in -о. To form the Genitive singular, the -о changes to -а, giving us мяса.
Why is there a dash (—) in the first sentence?
In Russian, the present tense of the verb to be (am, is, are) is typically skipped. When you have a sentence where a noun is directly equated to another noun (like your brother being a vegetarian), a dash is used in writing to connect them.
Why did they use приготовить instead of the basic verb готовить?
Приготовить is the perfective aspect of the verb. We use it here because the brother wants to complete a single, specific action with a result (cooking this particular pot of soup), rather than describing a general habit or the ongoing process of cooking.
The soup is what he is cooking, so why isn't суп in the Accusative case?
It actually is in the Accusative case! Because суп is a masculine inanimate noun (a non-living thing), its Accusative form is identical to its basic dictionary form. Only masculine animate nouns (like people or animals) and feminine words change their endings in the Accusative.