Questions & Answers about Любовь важнее денег.
Why is денег (money) in the genitive case here?
In Russian, when making a comparison, you can either use чем (than) followed by the nominative case (чем деньги), or you can drop чем and put the second item directly into the genitive case. So, важнее денег literally acts as "more important of money" and translates to "more important than money."
How is the comparative важнее formed?
It comes from the adjective важный (important). To form the short comparative (used to say "more [adjective]"), you usually drop the adjective ending and add -ее or -ей. These short comparatives never change their form, no matter the gender, case, or number of the noun they describe.
How do we get the form денег from деньги?
Деньги is a plural-only noun. To form its genitive plural, we drop the ending -и, leaving the stem деньг-. Because the stem ends in a consonant cluster, a fleeting vowel (е) is inserted to make it easier to pronounce, and the soft sign (ь) is dropped. This gives us денег.
Does любовь decline like the irregular nouns мать and дочь taught in this lesson?
It belongs to the same group of feminine nouns ending in a soft sign (3rd declension). However, unlike мать and дочь, which add the special suffix -ер- before case endings (like матери), любовь does not use a suffix. Instead, it has a fleeting о that disappears in oblique cases (for example, the genitive is любви). Here, it is simply in the nominative case.
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