Word
Дети считают до ста.
Meaning
The children count to a hundred.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Дети считают до ста.
дети
children
сто
one hundred
до
before, until
считать
to count; to consider
Questions & Answers about Дети считают до ста.
I thought the verb считать meant 'to think' or 'to consider', like in the indirect speech sentences we have been practicing?
It means both! In your recent lessons on indirect speech, you saw it used as 'to consider' or 'to think' (for example, Он считает, что... meaning 'He thinks that...'). But its literal meaning is 'to count', which is how it is used here.
Why is the word for a hundred ста instead of сто?
The preposition до (up to, until) always requires the genitive case. The number 100 (сто) is special: in the genitive, dative, instrumental, and prepositional cases, it simply changes its ending to -а, becoming ста.
Is дети the plural of ребёнок (child)? They look completely different!
Yes, it is! The word ребёнок has an irregular plural. Instead of just changing the ending, Russian uses a completely different word root for the plural, so 'children' is always дети.
Why does the verb end in -ют here?
Because the subject дети (children) is plural. The verb считать is a regular verb, so for the 'they' form (они), we drop the -ть from the dictionary form and add the plural ending -ют to make считают.