Breakdown of Сегодня тебе нужно пропустить литературу.
ты
you (singular)
сегодня
today
нужно
it is necessary
пропустить
to miss (perfective)
Questions & Answers about Сегодня тебе нужно пропустить литературу.
Why does the sentence use тебе instead of ты?
In Russian, you don't literally say "you need". Instead, you use an impersonal structure that translates to "it is necessary to you". Because of this "to", the pronoun ты (you) takes the Dative case, becoming тебе.
Why is the verb пропустить in its infinitive form?
After words that express need or obligation like нужно (is necessary / need), the action verb that follows always stays in the infinitive. It works just like English: you need "to skip".
пропустить is a perfective verb. Why do we use the perfective aspect here?
You are talking about skipping a specific class on a specific day (сегодня). Because this is a one-time, complete action, you need the perfective verb пропустить. If you were talking about skipping literature regularly, you would use the imperfective form пропускать.
Why does the word литература change to литературу?
It is the direct object of the sentence, which means it's the thing being skipped. To show this, feminine nouns that end in -а change to -у in the Accusative case.
Does литературу refer to reading books in general here?