Breakdown of Наш новый коллега высокого роста — настоящий трудяга.
новый
new
наш
our
высокий
tall / high (of a level or amount)
коллега
colleague
рост
height
настоящий
real
трудяга
hard worker
Questions & Answers about Наш новый коллега высокого роста — настоящий трудяга.
Why do the modifiers Наш новый and настоящий take masculine endings when коллега and трудяга end in -а?
Both коллега (colleague) and трудяга (hard worker) are common gender nouns (общий род). Even though they look feminine because they end in -а or -я, their grammatical gender changes based on who you are talking about. Here, the masculine modifiers tell us that this specific colleague is a man.
If the new colleague were a woman, how would this sentence change?
All the modifiers would switch to feminine to match the person's gender. The sentence would become: Наша новая коллега высокого роста — настоящая трудяга. The common gender nouns коллега and трудяга themselves stay exactly the same.
Why use the phrase высокого роста instead of just the adjective высокий?
высокого роста literally means of tall stature and uses the genitive of description. While you could say Наш высокий новый коллега, using the genitive case to describe physical characteristics like height or eye color is extremely common and sounds very natural in Russian.
Why is there a dash before настоящий?
The dash replaces the present tense verb is. When both the subject (коллега) and the core predicate (трудяга) are nouns in the nominative case, Russian grammar requires a dash between them.
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