Breakdown of Учёные спорят о радиусе и экваторе приблизительно в ста девяноста странах.
и
and
в
in / to (direction)
о
about (о, об, обо)
спорить
to argue
страна
country
учёный
scientist, scholar
девяносто
ninety
сто
one hundred
радиус
radius
экватор
equator
приблизительно
approximately
Questions & Answers about Учёные спорят о радиусе и экваторе приблизительно в ста девяноста странах.
How does the declension of сто девяносто work in this sentence?
It is in the prepositional case, matching странах (countries), because of the preposition в. When declining compound numbers, every word in the number must change its case. Here, both сто and девяносто change to their prepositional forms: ста and девяноста.
Why do both ста and девяноста end in -а for the prepositional case? Shouldn't prepositional endings usually be -е?
The numbers 40, 90, and 100 belong to a special group. They only have two forms: the nominative/accusative form (сорок, девяносто, сто) and a single form for all other oblique cases, which always ends in -а (сорока, девяноста, ста). Since this sentence requires the prepositional case, both parts take their -а ending.
Why is the preposition в placed after приблизительно? Could I say в приблизительно ста девяноста странах?
It is much better Russian to keep the preposition в directly next to the word it governs (the number ста). While you might hear native speakers occasionally put the preposition before adverbs like приблизительно in casual speech, standard Russian strongly prefers приблизительно в ста девяноста странах.
Why does the noun учёные have an adjective ending?
Учёный is a substantivized adjective. This means it originated as an adjective (meaning learned or scientific) but is now used as a noun to mean scientist. It still declines exactly like a standard adjective, which is why it takes the plural adjective ending -ые here for the nominative subject.
Both о радиусе and в странах are in the prepositional case. Why do they use different endings?
Радиус and экватор are masculine singular nouns, so they take the standard singular prepositional ending -е. Meanwhile, странах is plural, and the prepositional plural ending for almost all nouns is -ах or -ях.
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