Word
Если вам нужен хороший портной, то идите в это ателье.
Meaning
If you need a good tailor, go to this tailor shop.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Если вам нужен хороший портной, то идите в это ателье.
вы
you (plural or formal)
этот
this [f: эта, n: это]
хороший
good
в
in / to (direction)
Questions & Answers about Если вам нужен хороший портной, то идите в это ателье.
The current lesson is about attenuated comparatives with по-. How could we use one in this sentence to say 'a somewhat better tailor'?
You could replace хороший портной with портной получше (a tailor a bit better). When using these comparatives to modify a noun, it is very common to place them right after the noun for natural flow: Если вам нужен портной получше...
Why does the sentence use нужен instead of the impersonal нужно?
In Russian, 'you need a tailor' is structured as 'to you a tailor is necessary.' The word for 'necessary' (нужен) is a short adjective that must agree in gender and number with the thing being needed, which is the grammatical subject of the clause. Because портной is masculine, we use the masculine нужен rather than the neuter нужно.
The word портной looks like an adjective ending in -ой. Is it an adjective or a noun?
It is a noun meaning 'tailor', but grammatically it is a 'substantivized adjective'—a word that originated as an adjective and still declines exactly like one. For example, if you wanted to say 'I don't have a good tailor' (which requires the genitive case), you would decline both words with adjective endings: У меня нет хорошего портного.
Is the word то before идите strictly necessary?