Breakdown of Это самый плодородный гектар в долине.
это
this / it is
в
in / to (direction)
самый
most
долина
valley
Questions & Answers about Это самый плодородный гектар в долине.
Why is the superlative formed with самый here instead of a single word like плодороднейший?
Самый followed by the regular adjective is the standard, most common way to say "the most [adjective]" in everyday Russian. The single-word forms ending in -ейший or -айший often sound highly formal, poetic, or bookish, and not all adjectives even take them. For плодородный, самый плодородный is the natural choice.
Since the current lesson is about fractions, what case would гектар be in if we said "two thirds of a hectare"?
It would be in the Genitive singular: две третьих гектара. When you use a mathematical fraction, the noun being measured always takes the Genitive singular, because you are grammatically talking about a portion "of" one whole unit.
What is the Genitive plural form of гектар if I need to use it with larger numbers or fractions of multiple hectares?
The standard Genitive plural is гектаров. You might occasionally hear native speakers drop the ending and just say гектар in casual spoken Russian when counting them, but гектаров is the grammatically correct form you should learn and write.
Why do we use the preposition в for в долине (in the valley) when many geographical features use на?