Breakdown of У наших местных школ нет проблем.
школа
school
наш
our (наш, наша, наше)
проблема
problem
у
at, by
нет
there is no / is not present
местный
local
Questions & Answers about У наших местных школ нет проблем.
Why do наших and местных have different endings (-их vs -ых)?
They are both in the genitive plural because they describe школ, which is in the genitive case after the preposition у. The possessive pronoun наш takes the soft-sounding ending -их to become наших. The adjective местный has a hard stem, so it takes the hard ending -ых to become местных.
Why do the nouns школ and проблем look so short here? Where is the rest of the word?
Both words are in the genitive plural case. The preposition у triggers it for школ, and the negative word нет triggers it for проблем. Since their dictionary forms (школа and проблема) are feminine nouns ending in -а, they drop that final vowel entirely in the genitive plural, leaving what is called a zero ending.
How does this sentence mean "have no problems" when there is no verb for "have"?
Russian typically expresses possession using the "У + [owner] + есть + [object]" structure. However, when you want to say someone does NOT have something, the word есть is dropped and replaced by нет. Literally, the sentence is structured as "At our local schools there-is-no of-problems."
Is the letter т in местных pronounced?
No, it is completely silent. In Russian, when the consonant cluster -стн- appears in a word, the т is dropped in everyday speech to make the word easier to pronounce. It sounds like "месных".
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