Breakdown of Она сама ожидала несчастья.
она
she / it (for a feminine noun)
сам
oneself (сам, сама, само, сами)
ожидать
to expect
несчастье
misfortune (n)
Questions & Answers about Она сама ожидала несчастья.
Why is несчастья in the Genitive case instead of the Accusative case?
The verb ожидать (to expect) is a verb of expectation. In Russian, verbs of expectation, desire, and fear often require their object to be in the Genitive case rather than the Accusative, especially when the object is an abstract concept like несчастье (misfortune).
Could I use ждала instead of ожидала here?
Yes, ждала is perfectly fine and means practically the same thing. ожидать is simply a slightly more formal or literary version of ждать. Both verbs take the Genitive case when expecting something abstract.
I always mix up сама and себя. Why is it сама here?
сама is an emphatic pronoun meaning herself (as in she personally). It agrees with the subject Она in gender and case. You would use себя if the subject were acting upon itself as an object (like she saw herself). Here, she is not expecting herself, so we use сама to emphasize that she personally did the expecting.
The word несчастья ends in -я. Does that mean it is plural?
Not in this sentence. The dictionary form is несчастье, which is a neuter noun. To form the Genitive singular, the -е changes to -я. While несчастья happens to also be the Nominative plural form for misfortunes, here it is Genitive singular because it is the object of ожидала.
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