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Questions & Answers about Мой папа — рабочий.
Папа ends in -а, which usually makes a word feminine. Why does it use the masculine word мой (my)?
Even though папа (dad) ends in -а, it refers to a male person. In Russian, words for male family members like папа and дедушка (grandpa) are grammatically masculine. That is why you must use the masculine form мой instead of the feminine моя.
Why is there a dash (—) before the word рабочий?
In the present tense, Russian does not use a word for "am", "is", or "are". When you are saying that one noun is another noun (like "Dad is a worker"), a long dash is used in writing to take the place of that missing "is".
The word рабочий ends in -ий, which looks like an adjective. Is it an adjective or a noun here?
You are right to spot the adjective ending! Some words in Russian act as nouns but keep their adjective forms. Рабочий literally describes something as "working" or "laboring", but it is used as a noun here to mean a "worker".