Breakdown of Десятый вопрос — сложный, а пятый — лёгкий.
а
and (contrastive)
вопрос
question
сложный
difficult, complex
лёгкий
easy, light
пятый
fifth
десятый
tenth
Questions & Answers about Десятый вопрос — сложный, а пятый — лёгкий.
Why do десятый and пятый both end in -ый?
Ordinal numbers (like first, second, tenth) act exactly like adjectives in Russian. They must match the gender, number, and case of the noun they describe. Because вопрос (question) is a masculine noun in the Nominative case, both десятый (tenth) and пятый (fifth) take the standard masculine Nominative ending -ый.
Why are there dashes in this sentence?
In Russian, present tense sentences do not use a word for "is" or "are." When connecting a subject to its description, a dash is often used in writing to replace that missing "is". The second dash before лёгкий also helps show that the word вопрос was skipped so we don't have to repeat it, exactly like saying "the fifth is easy" in English.
Why use а for "but" here instead of но?
The conjunction а is used to show a contrast or comparison between two parallel things (the tenth question versus the fifth question). You use но when there is a direct, unexpected contradiction, such as "The tenth question is difficult, but I know the answer."
Why does лёгкий end in -ий instead of -ый like сложный?
This is a great example of the 7-letter spelling rule! You can never write the letter ы after the letters г, к, х, ж, ч, ш, or щ. Because the root of лёгкий ends in к, the usual masculine ending -ый must change to -ий.
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