"Кошки пьют воду?"

Translation: Do cats drink water?

[AnyaLiza3]

What does the "у" suffix do to the noun воду? I don't get it.

[theHimawan]

It becomes an accusative noun, which means it is the object of the sentence

[Gabriel_Hale_]

How do you know it supposed to be a question? Even the tone of the voice sounded neutral, no any uprising which could implied a question

[Etienne982450]

Yes they do. Don't give them soda you idiot.

[Lars200]

How come the stress in воду is in the first syllable whereas it's on the last in вода? Is there any rule involved here?

[Shady_arc]

Nouns have several patterns. "Вода", in particular, is ending-stressed in singular except Accusative, and stem-stressed in plural and in the Accusative case when it's singular. I guess, moving stress makes it a bit easier to hear the contract immediately.

English has a ton of very short words: pot, pat, pet, pit, put, pup, pep, pap, pip, pop, bet, bit, bat, but, bot. Russian is a bit more generous.

[Lars200]

Okay, thanks :)

[Mat067]

I'm a bit lost here. Why "кошки" and not "кошкы" for the nominative plural. Isn't it the same declention as "масса"?

[Shady_arc]

К, Г and Х never take ы, я or ю after. Instead, и, а, and у are always used.

[Mat067]

Thank you!

[GeneM.]

I thought this was asking "Are the cats drinking water?" Am I incorrect? Both answers sound right.

[linguist1313]

Same. Is there a difference in wording between these two?

[m0rya]

You both are right -- it's all about context in russian.

[Tarelka48]

Doesn't sound like a question...

[hufflepuffchim]

I thought the same thing.

[Bettyru2]

I thought it said: Кошки пьют воды. like they drink some water. I don't hear the difference with those unstressed syllables.

[CyrLee]

Cats drink water = кошки пьют водУ. Cats drink a little bit OF water = кошки пьют немного водЫ.

[Richard266241]

I just have a question. How do you distinguish between a question and an affirmation or statement? It still baffles me not being able to separate the two like in English or Spanish...

[Shady_arc]

It is intonation (in real life). In written texts, you put a question mark at the end of a question.