Breakdown of Он говорит по-английски, а также по-русски.
он
he / it (for a masculine noun) / it (for a neuter noun)
а
and (contrastive)
говорить
to speak, to talk
по-русски
in Russian
по-английски
in English
также
also, as well (formal)
Questions & Answers about Он говорит по-английски, а также по-русски.
The current lesson is about кроме (besides). Could we use it to express the same meaning here?
Yes! You could say Кроме английского, он говорит по-русски (Besides English, he speaks Russian). Notice that with кроме, you must use the Genitive noun (английского), whereas this sentence uses the adverbs по-английски and по-русски (literally 'in an English/Russian way').
Why use а также instead of just и (and)?
А также translates to 'as well as' or 'and also.' It puts slightly more emphasis on the addition of Russian to his skills than a simple и would. It is very common when adding an extra piece of information to the end of a thought or list.
Doesn't а usually mean 'but' or 'whereas'?
While а by itself usually shows contrast, here it is part of the fixed connector а также. You don't translate the а separately; the whole phrase just means 'and also' or 'as well as'.
Why do we use the hyphenated по-английски instead of the noun английский?
With verbs like говорить (to speak), понимать (to understand), or читать (to read), Russian uses these special adverbs to describe how the action is done. If you use a verb like знать (to know) or изучать (to study), you would use the noun instead: Он знает английский.
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