Breakdown of Фильм был такой сумасшедший, что я долго не спал.
не
not
я
I
фильм
movie
быть
to be
долго
for a long time
что
that (conjunction)
спать
to sleep
такой
such / so / what ... is
сумасшедший
crazy
Questions & Answers about Фильм был такой сумасшедший, что я долго не спал.
Why do we use такой here instead of так? Both can translate to "so" in English.
We use такой because it modifies the adjective сумасшедший (crazy), which describes the noun фильм (film). Такой behaves like an adjective itself and must agree with фильм in gender, number, and case (masculine, singular, nominative). You would use так if you were modifying a verb or an adverb, like in Он так быстро бегал (He ran so fast).
Is сумасшедший a regular adjective, or is there a trick to remembering it?
It functions as a regular adjective now, but looking at its roots makes it very memorable! It comes from the phrase сходить с ума (to go out of one's mind). It is made up of с (off/from) + ума (mind) + шедший (a past participle of going). So it literally means "having gone off one's mind."
Why is the imperfective verb не спал used here instead of a perfective verb?
The adverb долго (for a long time) tells us this clause is focused on the duration of a state. Whenever you emphasize how long an action lasted (or in this case, the ongoing state of not sleeping), you must use the imperfective aspect.
Could I reword this to say "It was such a crazy film, that..." using the same grammar?
Yes! The word order in our sentence (Фильм был такой сумасшедший) translates perfectly to "The film was so crazy". If you wanted to say "It was such a crazy film", you would say Это был такой сумасшедший фильм, что.... Both structures use такой ... что to show a high degree resulting in a consequence, and both are completely natural.
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