Ch 7 · Lesson 16Russian · Chapter 7 · Lesson 16 · Grammar primer
Conjunctions
Prescribed by the Edexcel specification.
The short version
Comparing two things? That and is a, not i
, . (Ya lyublyu chay, a ona lyubit kofe.)
Why?Hide
I adds one thing to another. A sets two different things side by side to contrast them, so mama doma, a papa na rabote needs a: Mum is at home and Dad is at work. With i it sounds like two unconnected facts. And after a negative, not X but Y, the but is always a: eto ne kofe, a chay.
Not X but Y always takes a, never no
, . (Eto ne kofe, a chay.)
Why?Hide
English says it's not coffee but tea, and the but pulls learners towards no. In Russian, the correction after a negative is always a: eto ne kofe, a chay. No means but in the sense of despite, as in eto trudno, no interesno. The one exception is the fixed pair ne tolko... no i, not only... but also.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 20 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 16 of 17 in this chapter