Word
Вместо того чтобы искать нефть, мы выбираем возобновляемую энергию.
Meaning
Instead of looking for oil, we are choosing renewable energy.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Вместо того чтобы искать нефть, мы выбираем возобновляемую энергию.
мы
we
выбирать
to choose
искать
to look for
тот
that
Questions & Answers about Вместо того чтобы искать нефть, мы выбираем возобновляемую энергию.
Why does this sentence use the infinitive искать rather than a conjugated verb?
When using вместо того чтобы (instead of), you follow it with an infinitive if the subject of both the main action and the replaced action is the same. Since "we" are doing the choosing and "we" are also the ones who would be looking for oil, искать stays in the infinitive.
Why use the imperfective искать (to look for) rather than a perfective verb?
We use the imperfective here because the sentence describes replacing a general, ongoing activity or continuous policy ("looking for oil") rather than skipping a single, completed, one-time action.
I often see commas inside long Russian conjunctions. Why is there no comma inside вместо того чтобы here?
When a compound conjunction like вместо того чтобы is located at the very beginning of a sentence, it is typically kept together without an internal comma. The comma is simply placed at the end of the entire subordinate clause to separate it from the main clause (...нефть, мы...).
The word возобновляемую is quite a mouthful! How is it built and why does it end in -ую?