Breakdown of Каждый народ живёт по-своему.
жить
to live
каждый
every
народ
people / nation (a people, collective)
по-своему
in one's own way
Questions & Answers about Каждый народ живёт по-своему.
How is по-своему formed, and what exactly does it mean here?
It belongs to the group of adverbs you are learning right now, formed with the prefix по- and a special ending. Specifically, it comes from the reflexive possessive pronoun свой (one's own) in the dative case (своему). Together, по-своему translates to "in one's own way."
The translation says "Every people lives...", but народ is singular and takes the singular verb живёт. Why?
In Russian, народ means a "nation" or a distinct group of people sharing a culture or language, which is why it acts as a singular masculine noun here. When you want to say "people" as the plural of "person" (like "there are many people here"), you must use the plural word люди.
Why do we use по-своему instead of a form based on "its" (like его), since народ is the subject?
This is a great reminder of the reflexive possessive свой. Russian requires свой (and words built from it) whenever the "owner" is the subject of the sentence. Since народ is the subject doing the living, it lives in its own way (по-своему).
Why is there a hyphen in по-своему?
Adverbs formed with the prefix по- are always hyphenated when they end in -ому, -ему, -ски, -ки, or -ьи (like по-русски or по-моему). If you removed the hyphen, по своему would just be the preposition по followed by a separate word in the dative case, expecting a noun after it (for example, по своему желанию - "by one's own wish").
Learn Каждый народ живёт по-своему and more in Russian
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free