Breakdown of Обитатели этого леса живут тихо.
этот
this [f: эта, n: это]
жить
to live
тихо
quietly
лес
forest, wood
обитатель
the inhabitant
Questions & Answers about Обитатели этого леса живут тихо.
Since the current lesson is about verbless existential negation with 'ни', how would we say 'There is not a single inhabitant in this forest'?
You would use ни with the Genitive case and no verb. For example: В этом лесу ни одного обитателя. Here, обитателя is the Genitive singular form.
The word for inhabitants is обитатели. What is its singular form, and why does it take an -и ending in the plural?
The singular is обитатель. Masculine nouns ending in a soft sign (-ь), especially those with the agent suffix -тель like teacher (учитель), take -и in the Nominative plural.
The infinitive for 'live' is жить. Why does the form живут have a в in it?
The verb жить has an irregular present tense stem. When conjugated, the stem becomes жив-, which gives us forms like я живу and они живут.
Why is этого леса in the Genitive case here?
It shows possession or association, functioning exactly like the English preposition 'of'. Обитатели этого леса translates literally as 'the inhabitants of this forest'.
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