Word
В этой статье картограф описывает как город Москву, так и озеро Байкал.
Meaning
In this article, the cartographer describes both the city of Moscow and lake Baikal.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of В этой статье картограф описывает как город Москву, так и озеро Байкал.
и
and
город
city
этот
this [f: эта, n: это]
в
in / to (direction)
Questions & Answers about В этой статье картограф описывает как город Москву, так и озеро Байкал.
Why is Москву in the accusative case here instead of staying in the nominative?
When a familiar city is used with the generic word город, the name of the city usually agrees with the case of город. Since the cartographer is describing the city (город is the direct object in the accusative case), the name Moscow must also take the accusative case, becoming Москву.
Does the name Байкал also agree with the case of its generic noun озеро?
No, unlike cities and rivers, the names of lakes, mountains, and islands typically stay in the nominative case regardless of what case the generic noun is in. In this exact sentence, both are direct objects so they look identical to their nominative forms anyway, but if you used the prepositional case, it would be в городе Москве (both change) but на озере Байкал (only the generic noun changes).
What does the structure как ... так и mean in this sentence?
The construction как [X], так и [Y] is a correlative conjunction that translates to 'both [X] and [Y]' or 'not only [X] but also [Y]'. It is heavily used in formal or written Russian to link two items with equal emphasis. Notice that it always requires a comma before the так и portion.
Why use the imperfective verb описывает instead of a perfective verb?
When summarizing the ongoing contents of a text, article, or book (e.g., 'the author argues', 'the article describes'), Russian generally uses the imperfective aspect in the present tense, much like how English uses the present simple.