Breakdown of Неужели директора уволили из-за этой сплетни?
этот
this [f: эта, n: это]
директор
director
из-за
because of; from behind
неужели
really / is it possible (expressing surprise or disbelief)
Questions & Answers about Неужели директора уволили из-за этой сплетни?
How does неужели change the meaning of this question compared to asking it normally?
It adds a strong sense of surprise or disbelief. While just asking Директора уволили? is a simple request for facts (Did they fire the director?), adding неужели makes the tone much more emotional, meaning "Is it actually possible that they fired the director?" or "Did they really fire him?"
Why is the verb уволили (they fired) in the plural, since the sentence doesn't mention the word "they" (они)?
This is a common way to express passive ideas in Russian. When the person who performed the action is unknown or irrelevant (like saying "the director was fired" or "he got fired" in English), Russian often drops the subject pronoun entirely and just uses the "they" form of the verb (уволили).
Why does the word for director end in -а (директора)? Is it in the genitive case?
It looks exactly like the genitive case, but it is actually the accusative case here! The director is the direct object receiving the action of being fired. For animate masculine nouns (people and animals), the accusative case endings match the genitive case endings, so директор becomes директора.
I learned that из-за means "from behind". Why is it translated as "because of" here?