Questions & Answers about В лесу растут берёзы.
Why is the ending -у in в лесу instead of the normal Prepositional ending -е?
Лес (forest) is one of a specific group of short masculine nouns that takes a stressed -у in the Prepositional case when describing a physical location (answering 'where?'). This is often called the Locative case. If you were just talking about the forest rather than being inside it, you would use the standard Prepositional ending: о лесе (about the forest).
Why does the sentence start with the location (в лесу) rather than the subject (берёзы)?
Russian word order is flexible and uses position to show emphasis. Sentences often start with the established scene or background and end with the new or most important information. Putting берёзы at the very end emphasizes exactly what is growing there. It translates closer to 'In the forest, what grows are birches.'
What is the infinitive of растут and why does the stem look different?
The infinitive is расти (to grow). It has a slightly tricky present-tense stem: раст-. The т drops out in the infinitive form but appears in all present-tense conjugations, which is why 'they grow' becomes они растут.
Since берёзы comes after the verb, could it be in the Accusative case?
No, берёзы is in the Nominative case here because it is the subject performing the action (the birches are the ones doing the growing). Because берёза is an inanimate feminine noun, its Nominative plural and Accusative plural share the exact same form (берёзы), but the grammar of the sentence tells us it must be the subject.
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