Questions & Answers about Моей сестре очень больно.
Why is it Моей сестре instead of Моя сестра?
This sentence uses an impersonal construction to describe a physical state. In Russian, when you talk about how someone feels (like being cold, bored, or in pain), the person experiencing the feeling is put into the Dative case rather than being the subject. It translates literally to "To my sister, it is very painful."
How do the Dative endings work for моя сестра here?
For feminine words in the singular, the possessive pronoun моя changes to моей. The noun сестра drops the -а and adds -е to become сестре.
Why does больно end in -о? Shouldn't it match the feminine noun?
больно is a predicative adverb describing a state, not an adjective describing the sister. In these impersonal expressions, there is no grammatical subject for an adjective to match, so the state word always takes the fixed -о ending.
Where is the verb in this sentence?
In the present tense, Russian omits the verb "to be." The sentence literally works out as "To my sister [it is] very painful." If you were talking about the past, you would see the neuter verb было added: Моей сестре было очень больно.
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