"Мої брат і сестра - студенти."

Translation: My brother and sister are students.

[JewishPolyglot]

I just can't get over how cavemanlike Ukrainian grammar is: "My brother and sister - students! Grunt!"

[Shady_arc]

That's pretty logical, actually. An analogue of "was" means you are talking about the Past, "will be" refers to the Future and the lack of any verb is interpreted as Present.

I mean, seriously. English does it all the time: the "-s" ending is used in "He eats", you should use -ed in "I watched TV" but no ending in particular is used in "I see you" or "You eat too much". The lack of a certain feature might be a meaningful feature of itself.

[JewishPolyglot]

I agree with you, it makes a lot of sense. I can even identify with it on some level, since I learned Hebrew as a kid, and Hebrew doesn't have "am "are" or "is" in it either. At least Hebrew has a definite article prefix

[Zilvador]

And similar to Spanish were they often leave out the pronoun. It's not "I run" but just "run", since the choise of conjugation reveals the pronoun.
But I admit that it does look funny in Ukranian if you're not used to it :).

[ViktoriaDeWit]

It is smart. We try to simplify spoken language as much as possible so it takes less time to speak. In English you use contractions: e.g. I'll instead of I will. In Swedish a lot of letters are not pronounced when speaking. This really isn't any different.

[gizzard123]

"my brother and sister - students" was not accepted. Didn't know that a dash (-) stands for "are".

[Neco_Coneco]

Ukrainian (also Russian) doesn't use the verb 'to be' in the present form. They just put a dash for this.

[adeleidee]

So is мої a feminine or a masculine pronoun? Or non of them? Sorry im kinda confused.

[Shady_arc]

It is plural.

[yadwinder_gadari]

Is the dash necessary ?

[Dasintro]

Yes. Dash is placed between subject and predicate when the predicate is a noun.

[yadwinder_gadari]

English please. :-)

[Dasintro]

Oh, it's like:

Моя сестра (noun subject) вчить (verb predicate) українську . //My sister learns Ukrainian.

Моя сестра (noun subject) - студент (noun predicate). //My sister is a student.

But dash is not necessary in:

Моя сестра (noun subject) хороша (adjective predicate). //My sister is good.

[Nyafeinstein]

Do you pronounce the "-"? Is that the grunt everyone is talking about?

[ViktoriaDeWit]

Huh? You don't pronounce it at all. Of course you don't grunt. That would be weird.

[ElonMuskM]

I will still grunt when I will see the "-"