Breakdown of Этот танец очень красивый.
красивый
beautiful
этот
this [f: эта, n: это]
очень
very
танец
dance
Questions & Answers about Этот танец очень красивый.
Why is there no word for "is" in this sentence?
In Russian, the present tense of the verb "to be" is almost never used. You simply put the subject (Этот танец) directly next to its description (очень красивый).
Why do we use Этот instead of Это?
If you want to say "This is a dance," you use the fixed neutral word Это (Это танец). But here, "This" is pointing directly to a specific noun ("This dance"). Therefore, it must change to match the noun's gender, becoming the masculine form Этот.
How do we know that танец (dance) is a masculine noun?
You can usually figure out a Russian noun's gender by its last letter. Because танец ends in a consonant (ц), it is masculine. This tells us we need masculine endings for the words that describe it, like Этот and красивый.
Why does красивый (beautiful) end in -ый?
Adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. Because танец is masculine, the adjective takes the standard masculine ending -ый. If the noun were feminine, it would end in -ая instead.
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