Breakdown of Он переоценил свой опыт и провалил сложный проект.
и
and
он
he / it (for a masculine noun) / it (for a neuter noun)
проект
the project
сложный
difficult, complex
свой
one's own
опыт
experience
провалить
to fail
переоценить
to overestimate
Questions & Answers about Он переоценил свой опыт и провалил сложный проект.
How does the prefix пере- function in the verb переоценил?
It adds the meaning of excess to the base verb оценить (to evaluate or estimate). Therefore, переоценить means 'to overestimate'. As you learned in this lesson, you could use the opposite prefix to say he underestimated it: недооценил.
Why does the sentence use свой instead of его for 'his'?
Свой is a reflexive possessive pronoun that always refers back to the subject of the clause, which here is Он (He). If the sentence said Он переоценил его опыт, it would mean that he overestimated someone else's experience.
I usually see 'fail' translated differently. How does провалил work here?
Провалил is the perfective past tense of проваливать. While it literally means 'to let something fall through', it is a standard, very common way to say you failed an exam, an interview, or a project. You might also recognize the related noun провал (a failure or flop).
Both опыт and проект are direct objects. Why don't their endings change?
They are actually in the accusative case because they are direct objects, but both are masculine inanimate nouns. For masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative form is identical to the nominative (dictionary) form, which is why their endings appear unchanged.
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