Breakdown of А победитель приготовил крем за минуту!
а
and (contrastive)
минута
minute
приготовить
to cook (perfective)
победитель
winner
за
in (within a period of time)
крем
cream
Questions & Answers about А победитель приготовил крем за минуту!
Why do we need the preposition за here? Couldn't we just say приготовил минуту?
No, because the action is completely finished. The perfective verb приготовил (finished preparing) tells us the result was achieved. To express how long it took to complete a result, Russian uses за + the Accusative case (за минуту). If you used just the bare Accusative (минуту without за), you would need the imperfective verb готовил to mean 'he spent a minute preparing it'.
Why is the word for minute written as минуту instead of минута?
Because the preposition за requires the Accusative case when we use it to talk about time. Минута is a feminine noun, and its -а ending changes to -у in the Accusative case.
крем is what he prepared, so shouldn't it be in the Accusative case? Why didn't the ending change?
It actually is in the Accusative case here! Because крем is a masculine, inanimate noun (a thing, not a person or animal), its Accusative form looks exactly the same as its basic dictionary (Nominative) form.
Why does the sentence start with А for 'But' instead of Но?
А is used for contrast rather than a hard contradiction. It sets up a comparison: perhaps the other contestants took a long time, whereas the winner did it in one minute. Но is used when something directly prevents or opposes what came before it.
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