The other day we mentioned that the words два/две ‘two’ are followed by a noun in a form that resembles the genitive singular. What's really freaky, though, is that if you put an adjective between the number and the noun, you don't use the genitive singular. So what for do you use? Well, that depends...

If you are dealing with masculine or neuter nouns, then you have to use an adjectival form that copies the genitive plural:

If you are dealing with feminine nouns, it is usually best to use an adjectival form that copies the nominative plural:

Here are some sample sentences:

¹ You will sometimes also encounter две новых машины, аlthough новые is better style these days.

The word она is a personal pronoun that declines like this:

The «н» versions of the pronoun occur when the pronoun is the object of a preposition.

Она refers to feminine singular nouns, which can be either people or things, so sometimes it is translated as she/her, and sometimes it is translated as it. In other words, if you are refering to an учительница "school teacher," then the sentence must be translated with she/her, and if you are refering to a машина car, the same sentence must be translated with it:

In casual conversation it's common in America to say things like “Me and Sally went to the store,” especially when we are children. Schoolteachers then try to beat us out of that habit and make us say “She and I went to the store.” Because of that influence, English speakers may be tempted to say things like «Она и я ездили в магазин» in Russian. While theoretically one can say that in Russian, no one ever does. Instead it gets rephrased as “we with her” «мы с ней». Of course, it would be ridiculous to translate that as “we with her” in English; you still want “she and I” or just plain old ‘we.’

Every student of the Russian language knows that Russian nouns have a singular form and a plural form. Many don't know that a thousand years ago those nouns had a “dual form” as well. The dual meant “two of an item”, whereas the plural meant “more than two of an item”. Thus града meant “two cities” and сътѣ meant "two hundreds" and сестрѣ meant “two sisters”. At that time the number дъва was an adjective that agreed with masculine dual nouns and emphasized twoness, and дъвѣ was an adjective that agreed with neuter/feminine nouns and emphasized twoness as well. So back then we had дъва града “two cities”, дъвѣ сътѣ “two hundreds”, and дъвѣ сестрѣ “two sisters”.

Over the centuries time/entropy/life disrupted all that beautiful grammatical symmetry. The "-a" form of masculine nouns often resembled the genitive singular, so nowadays the numbers два/две are followed by nouns in a form that generally coincides with the genitive singular form. The gender association of the numbers shifted as well: nowadays два is used with masculine and neuter nouns, and две is only used with feminine nouns. Here are some sample sentences:

Previously we discussed выходить/выйти in the sense of ‘to exit, walk out of, step out of.’ Today we want to focus on a subset of those meanings. The past tense of the verb is often used to mean “to leave a place with the intention of returning shortly.” When used this way, it is often accompanied by the preposition на followed by a time phrase in the accusative:

The Russian verb that means ‘to exit, walk out of, step out of’ is выходить/выйти:

The verb is most often used with the preposition из and the genitive case to indicate the place from which the subject is leaving. Although the essential meaning of the verb is 'to exit,' it often sounds stiff to use 'exit' in translation. A good translation will substitute other phrases that capture the same idea but flow better: