Russian/Grammar/Articles

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Russian lacks the articles "a", "an" and "the". English uses the definite article "the" to indicate a specific place, thing, etc.: "I ate the orange" suggests there was only one orange, or it was in some way special. English uses the indefinite articles "a" and "an" to indicate that the following noun is not specific, e.g., "I ate an orange" suggests there were several oranges. Note that English only uses indefinite articles for singular nouns: "I ate oranges" (plural) lacks an article.

Russian also lacks the present-tense forms of the verb "to be" ("am", "are" and "is").

Thus the English four-word sentence "I am a student" is just two words in Russian: "Я студент." In written Russian, when a sentence has two nouns in a row, a — is written between the nouns to indicate the verb "to be." E.g., "Tanya is a student" translates to "Таня — студент." Not a book title page. Please remove {{alphabetical}} from this page.