Word
А его сестра — такая тихоня.
Meaning
And his sister is such a quiet girl.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of А его сестра — такая тихоня.
сестра
sister
а
and (contrastive)
такой
such / so / what ... is
его
his / its (possessive)
Questions & Answers about А его сестра — такая тихоня.
Why is the modifier такая in the feminine form? Doesn't тихоня just take feminine modifiers because it ends in -я?
Тихоня is a common gender noun. This means it can refer to either a male or a female. The adjectives and pronouns describing it must match the natural gender of the person being talked about. Because we are talking about his sister (сестра), we use the feminine такая, not because of the -я ending.
How would this sentence change if we were talking about his brother instead?
It would be А его брат — такой тихоня. Even though тихоня ends in -я, it takes the masculine modifier такой because the person it refers to is male. The noun тихоня itself does not change its form.
What exactly is the dash (—) doing in this sentence?
The dash is acting as a substitute for the present tense of the verb to be. In Russian, when both the subject (сестра) and the predicate (тихоня) are nouns in the nominative case, a dash is typically placed between them.
Why does the sentence start with А rather than И for the word And?
The conjunction А is used to show contrast. While it translates to And here, it implies a comparison to someone else just mentioned, perhaps a sibling who is very loud. The word И would merely add information without that contrasting flavor.