Breakdown of Как помочь бедным и бездомным собакам?
и
and
собака
dog
как
how
помочь
to help (perfective)
бедный
poor
бездомный
homeless
Questions & Answers about Как помочь бедным и бездомным собакам?
Why are the words for "poor", "homeless", and "dogs" in the Dative case here?
The verb помочь (to help) requires the receiver of the help to be in the Dative case. Since we are talking about multiple dogs, the whole phrase бедным и бездомным собакам is put into the Dative plural.
Why do the adjectives бедным and бездомным end in -ым?
In the Dative plural, adjectives take either -ым or -им. Because the base forms (бедный, бездомный) end in a hard consonant before the ending, they take the hard ending -ым.
How do we get the ending -ам for собакам?
The dictionary form is собака (dog). To form the Dative plural, we use -ам for hard stems and -ям for soft stems. Since the stem ends in the hard consonant к, we drop the singular -а and add -ам.
Why is the verb помочь in the infinitive instead of being conjugated?
Using the question word как followed directly by an infinitive is the standard way to ask a general "how-to" question in Russian. It works just like the English "How to help?" when you are asking for a general solution rather than asking how a specific person is helping.
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