Breakdown of В двух словах: нам нужен новый план.
мы
we
новый
new
план
plan
нужен
needed (short form)
в двух словах
in a nutshell, in two words
Questions & Answers about В двух словах: нам нужен новый план.
Why is В двух словах translated as "In a nutshell"?
Literally, в двух словах translates to "in two words". It is the standard Russian idiom used to summarize something briefly, serving the exact same purpose as "in a nutshell" or "long story short" in English.
Why is the number two written as двух instead of два?
The idiom relies on the preposition в combined with the prepositional case. Because Russian numbers decline, the nominative два must change to its prepositional form, двух, to correctly match the plural noun словах.
Why is the pronoun нам in the dative case?
Expressing need in Russian uses an indirect construction. The person experiencing the need is placed in the dative case (literally "to us"), while the needed object acts as the grammatical subject.
If нам refers to multiple people, why is нужен in the singular?
The short-form adjective нужен agrees with the grammatical subject of the sentence, which is the thing being needed, not the people needing it. Since план is a masculine singular noun, нужен must also be masculine singular.
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