Word
Как только начнётся ферментация, сыровар проверит сыр спустя неделю.
Meaning
As soon as fermentation begins, the cheesemaker will check the cheese a week later.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Как только начнётся ферментация, сыровар проверит сыр спустя неделю.
неделя
week
сыр
cheese
проверить
to check (perfective)
как только
as soon as
Questions & Answers about Как только начнётся ферментация, сыровар проверит сыр спустя неделю.
Why do we use the accusative case in спустя неделю and can the word order change?
The temporal preposition спустя (after / later) always requires the accusative case, which is why the feminine noun неделя becomes неделю. Interestingly, спустя can be placed either before the noun (спустя неделю) or after it (неделю спустя) without changing the meaning.
Why is начнётся in the future tense when the English translation says 'begins'?
In Russian, temporal conjunctions like как только (as soon as) require the future tense if the action happens in the future. While English uses the present tense ('begins'), Russian logically uses the future perfective verb начнётся to show that fermentation will start before the cheesemaker checks the cheese.
Why is the reflexive verb начнётся used here instead of начнёт?
Because the action is intransitive—the fermentation is starting itself, not starting something else. If you used the non-reflexive начнёт, you would need a direct object in the accusative case (for example, if the cheesemaker started the fermentation).
How is the noun сыровар (cheesemaker) constructed?
It is a compound noun made of two roots: сыр (cheese) and вар- from the verb варить (to boil or cook). Compound nouns describing professions are common in Russian, and this one translates quite literally to a 'cheese-boiler'.