Breakdown of Он заставил детей убрать комнату.
он
he / it (for a masculine noun) / it (for a neuter noun)
ребёнок
child
комната
room
убирать
to clean
заставить
to force, to make someone do
Questions & Answers about Он заставил детей убрать комнату.
How would we change this sentence to say 'Let the children tidy the room' using the 'пусть' grammar from this lesson?
You would use the particle пусть followed by the subject and the future tense of the perfective verb: Пусть дети уберут комнату. Notice that дети is in the nominative case here because they are the subject, whereas in the original sentence they were the object of заставил (to force).
Why do we use заставил here instead of a form of сделать (to make)?
In English, 'make' can mean forcing someone to do something. In Russian, сделать only means 'to make or do' in a creative or physical sense (like making a sandwich). To say you forced or compelled someone to perform an action, you must use заставить.
Why is детей used here instead of the nominative дети?
Детей is the direct object of the verb заставил (he forced the children), so it needs to be in the accusative case. Because children are animate (living beings), their plural accusative form looks exactly like the genitive plural.
Why use the perfective verb убрать instead of the imperfective убирать?
He made them achieve a specific, completed result: getting the room clean this one time. If he forced them to do this chore regularly (for example, every weekend), you would use the imperfective убирать.
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