"Глубина реки — около десяти метров."

Translation: The depth of the river is about ten meters.

[E.T.Gregor]

Why not "approximately ten meters"?

[keinemeinung]

They do mean the same thing, though stylistically "approximately" is a different level than "about". The equivalent in Russian would be приблизительно (десять метров). Who knows if that's what the course designers were aiming for or not, though :\

[Shady_arc]

Yes, that's about it. Около десяти метров, примерно десять метров and приблизительно десять метров are all possible phrasings (theoretically speaking). The last one nicely maps onto a more formal "approximately 10 m". Even the number of letters in "приблизительно" and "approximately" is about the same.

[John495488]

That's one deep ass river!

[Sveta232551]

Wrong pronounciation. Correct is рекИ.

[Grimaldy45948]

So when is kilometer in the genitive plural case ending and in the masculine accusative singular ending?

[keinemeinung]

The preposition около requires genitive case (this is why десять is also in genitive).

Additionally, numbers themselves affect the nouns they describe. Один километр (nominative singular), два/три/четыре километра (genitive singular), пять/шесть/семь/восемь/девять/десять километров (genitive plural).

An example where you'd use accusative singular with kilometer might be to say that you walked one kilometer (я прошел один километр пешком).

[Strangemushrooms]

"The river is nearly ten meters deep."
Why not?

[ZenSurvivor]

"Nearly" means "almost" — "почти".

[Imnuts7]

'Nearly' means it is almost but <10m, and 'about' means ~10m

[PiterPiola]

It depends: close can be used also when you are approaching a given value ... "i.e. our stock is close to zero" . So it doesn't imply you are short.

[jQuasebarth]

Why isn't Instrumental used here, as we speak about a river of a certain depth?

[john.newbe]

Why do you say meters ? A meter is an object that is used to measure something. The distance is a metre

[Shady_arc]

These two words are spelt the same in American English—which we consistently use in this course (well, to the best of our abilities—we only have one American in the team).

[SwashbuklinFinch]

"The depth of the river is close to ten meters"?
That was literal and marked wrong. As a native speaker, I might reword and say, "the river was close to 10 meters deep." Would this be a bad translation?

[Theron126]

Maybe this is just me, but when I hear "close to" with measurements, the suggestion is generally that it's a little bit short.

[nicbentulan]

'never cross a river if it is on average four feet deep.'