"Это - медведь."
Translation:This is a bear.
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Actually no, there is another difference between 'this lion' an 'this is a lion'. 'это' means 'this is' or 'this' if your noun is neutral. Since lion is masculine in Russian, you need to use another form 'этот'. ('эта' for female nouns)
So to sum up:
'this is a lion' --> 'это лев' or 'это - лев' (no idea about that one^^) 'this lion' --> 'этот лев'
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It should be verb "to be" here. But Russians do not like to use it. The verb "to be" will appear in the interrogative sentence. Это есть медведь = (это - медведь). Медведь есть?
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If it's essentially a subject of a sentence ("What is it?" - Что это?, or "It is..." - Это ..."), then it will be... "it is". But then it can only be Это. You can also attach it to a noun to indicate "this" or "these", but then it will decline based on the gender, number and case of things it's attached to.
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The ь implies the д is palatalized, but is this actually true in the modern pronunciation of медведь? Maybe it's hard to hear when it's the final sound in a phrase?
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The pronunciation is different then how the word is spelled. Does anyone else hear it differently?
No, это медведь и это - медведь mean the same exact thing ("It is a bear" or "That is a bear"). The hyphen is added between two nouns or pronouns in the nominative to indicate that one thing is the other thing without combining the two into one.
"There is a bear", depending on the context, would be just "Там медведь" or "там и есть медведь".
"Это" has multiple roles.
It can be a pronoun, like in "I like this/it" (мне это нравится).
It can be a particle meaning "it is" or "this is" or "that is", etc., like in the example phrase here. That's how it is used when there's a dash after it.
One thing those two uses share is that "это" does not change form, no matter if whatever you're talking about is plural, singular, masculine, feminine, or neuter.
When saying "this bear", though, we're need not a pronoun or a particle, but determiner. And that determiner needs to agree with the noun it modifies. Not only that, it is declined! In that case, это is used only for neuter words. Given that медведь is a masculine, you'd need "этот медведь" instead.
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I was expecting eto but heard etot. It was marked wrong. I have played repeatedly and I still hear t. At the slow speed, though, it is eto.