Breakdown of Президент назначил нового министра шестого февраля две тысячи третьего года.
новый
new
год
year
две
two (f)
февраль
February
тысяча
thousand
третий
third
шестой
sixth
президент
president
министр
the minister
назначить
to appoint (perfective)
Questions & Answers about Президент назначил нового министра шестого февраля две тысячи третьего года.
Why is the entire date (шестого февраля две тысячи третьего года) in the Genitive case?
To say that an event happened on a specific full date, Russian puts the ordinal day, the month, and the ordinal year into the Genitive case. You don't need a preposition like "on"; the case itself does the work. Literally, the phrasing acts like "of the sixth of February of the 2003rd year."
In the year две тысячи третьего года, why didn't the words две тысячи change to the Genitive case too?
When working with compound ordinal numbers (like "2003rd") in Russian, only the very last word is an ordinal number and changes its case to match the grammar of the sentence. The preceding words (две тысячи) act like regular counting numbers and stay in their default Nominative form.
Why does the direct object нового министра have Genitive endings instead of typical Accusative ones?
Because a minister is a living person! For masculine nouns, the Accusative case (which marks the direct object) borrows the exact same endings as the Genitive case if the noun is "animate" (alive). If the president had formed a new committee (inanimate), it would just keep its base form: новый комитет.
Do we have to say the word года at the end of the date?
In formal or written Russian, like a news report about a president, you almost always include года (or its written abbreviation г.). In casual spoken Russian, people sometimes drop it if the context makes it obvious they are talking about a year, but at this stage, it is best to practice including it.
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