Questions & Answers about Это музыкальная школа.
Why doesn't Это match the feminine gender of школа?
When это means "this is" or "these are" to introduce a new thing, it acts as a fixed pointing word and always stays in this default neuter form. If you wanted to say "this school" as a single combined phrase rather than a full sentence, you would change the pronoun to match the feminine noun: эта школа.
How would we change this to mean "of these music schools" to practice our new genitive plural rules?
To make the phrase genitive plural, the plural word for "these" (эти) becomes этих, the adjective музыкальная takes the -ых ending to become музыкальных, and школа drops its ending to become школ. So, "of these music schools" is этих музыкальных школ.
Why is the word for "music" an adjective (музыкальная) here?
In English, we often stack nouns together to describe things (like "music school" or "water bottle"). Russian doesn't usually do this; it turns the describing noun into an adjective. So you are literally saying "musical school".
Where is the word for "is" in this sentence?
In Russian, the present tense forms of the verb "to be" (am, is, are) are almost always left out. You just put the two parts of the sentence next to each other, literally saying "This musical school."
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