Breakdown of Мой брат работал в компании, но у компании был убыток в две тысячи шестом году.
брат
brother
мой
my / mine
работать
to work
у
at, by
год
year
две
two (f)
быть
to be
в
on / during (a time period)
но
but
компания
company
тысяча
thousand
шестой
sixth
убыток
the loss (m)
Questions & Answers about Мой брат работал в компании, но у компании был убыток в две тысячи шестом году.
Why is the word for year году instead of the regular prepositional ending годе?
The word год (year) is one of a special group of masculine nouns that take an irregular -у ending in the Prepositional case when talking about time or location. So, when saying in a specific year, you will always use в ... году.
In в две тысячи шестом году (in 2006), why is only шестом changed while две тысячи stays the same?
When expressing a specific year in Russian, you use ordinal numbers (like saying the 2006th year). In compound numbers, only the very last word changes its case. Две тысячи stays in the Nominative case, and only шестой (sixth) changes to the Prepositional case шестом to match году.
The word компании appears twice: в компании and у компании. Are these in the same case?
They look identical but they are actually different cases! Nouns ending in -ия (like компания) change their ending to -ии in both the Prepositional case (used here for location: в компании) and the Genitive case (used here for possession: у компании).
In у компании был убыток (the company had a loss), why is был masculine when компания is feminine?
In the Russian possession structure (у + possessor), the grammatical subject of the sentence is actually the thing being possessed. Since убыток (loss) is a masculine noun, the past tense verb был must be in the masculine form to agree with it, regardless of the gender of the company.
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