Breakdown of Они решили жениться, но у них нет квартиры.
они
they
квартира
apartment
у
at, by
нет
there is no / is not present
но
but
решить
to decide (perfective)
жениться
to get married
Questions & Answers about Они решили жениться, но у них нет квартиры.
Why is the word for "to get married" жениться here?
The verb жениться comes from the word жена (wife). It is used when a man gets married (literally "to wive oneself") OR when a couple gets married together, like the "they" (они) in this sentence. If you are talking specifically about a woman getting married, you must use a completely different phrase: выходить замуж.
Why is it у них instead of just у их?
Whenever a third-person pronoun (like он, она, оно, or они) comes directly after a preposition, Russian adds an н- to the beginning of it to make the phrase flow better when speaking. Since у is a preposition, the genitive pronoun их turns into у них.
Why does the word for apartment end in -ы (квартиры)?
This happens because of the word нет. When you state that something does not exist or someone doesn't have something using нет, the thing that is missing must take the Genitive case. For a standard feminine noun like квартира, the ending -а changes to -ы.
Since we are learning about using the Dative case for age, why do we use у них here instead of им?
These structures express different ideas using different cases! To say how old someone is, Russian uses the Dative case to say the years happen to them (им 20 лет). But to talk about possession, like having or not having an apartment, you always use the preposition у plus the Genitive case (у них), which literally means "by them".
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