Questions & Answers about Это был хороший вечер.
Why do we use the masculine verb был (was) here?
In Russian, the past tense of the verb 'to be' changes based on the gender of the noun. Because вечер (evening) is a masculine noun ending in a consonant, we must use the masculine past tense form был.
If вечер is masculine, why does the sentence start with the neuter word Это instead of Этот?
When saying 'This is' or 'That was' to introduce a situation or identify something, Russian always uses the fixed neuter form Это. You only use the masculine Этот if it is directly attached to the noun as a pointing word, like in Этот вечер был хороший (This evening was good).
Since this lesson focuses on time words, how would I say 'Yesterday was a good evening'?
You can simply add the word for yesterday (вчера) to the sentence. A natural way to say it is Вчера был хороший вечер. Notice that we can easily drop Это (that) because Вчера already perfectly sets the scene for what you are describing.
Does the adjective хороший (good) change if we talk about a different time of day, like the morning?
Yes! Adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. If you wanted to say 'That was a good morning', you would use the neuter noun утро (morning). The sentence would change to Это было хорошее утро, with both the verb and adjective matching the neuter gender.
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