Word
Он сделал тесто за десять минут.
Meaning
He made the dough in ten minutes.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Он сделал тесто за десять минут.
он
he / it (for a masculine noun) / it (for a neuter noun)
десять
ten
минута
minute
сделать
to do (perfective) / to make (perfective)
Questions & Answers about Он сделал тесто за десять минут.
Why do we need the preposition за here? Couldn't we just say десять минут?
We use за + Accusative to mean it took a certain amount of time to complete an action. Since making the dough is a finished result, we need за. If you just used десять минут, it would mean 'for ten minutes' and would require an imperfective verb to show ongoing duration.
Why did we use the perfective verb сделал instead of the imperfective делал?
The perfective verb сделал focuses on the successful completion of the action: the dough is fully made. This pairs perfectly with за десять минут. If you used the imperfective делал, you would drop the за to say he spent ten minutes working on it, without saying if he actually finished.
How do we know if тесто is in the Nominative or Accusative case here?
It is in the Accusative case because it is the direct object receiving the action (the thing he made). For inanimate neuter nouns like тесто, the Accusative form looks exactly like the dictionary (Nominative) form.
Why does the word for minutes change to минут?
After numbers 5 and up, such as десять, Russian requires the following noun to be in the Genitive plural case. Минут is the Genitive plural form of the feminine noun минута.