The Missing Is

Here's the phrase and its word-for-word translation:

           
Whatisthis?

What happened to the word is? Very simple: Russian doesn't use the verb "to be" in the present tense.

Here's what some sentences would look like if translated word-for-word from Russian:

EnglishRussian Translation
I am a student.I -- student.
She is a doctor.She -- doctor.
The book is big.Book -- big.

You'll also notice that Russian doesn't use words for a and the, either. To speakers of English, this sounds like dialogue from a really bad Tarzan movie, and they are tempted to think of Russian as primitive. It's not; Russian is just very economical in its use of words.

What would you like to do next?

  1. Find out why the is pronounced differently in the two words.
  2. Find out why the is pronounced like "sh" instead of "ch".
  3. Continue with the tutorial.
  4. Go back to the "What is this" page.