э́то
[ˈɛtə]eto
it; this; can be translated as "it" or "he", "she", "they", as appropriate
Meanings
- 1
it — Used as a personal pronoun when not referring to a particular noun. Translated as "it".
Я не буду это есть.
I'm not going to eat this.
Tatoeba · odexed · CC BY 2.0 FR
«Быть не может!» — «Но это так!»
"This cannot be!" "But it is!"
Tatoeba · odexed · CC BY 2.0 FR
- 2
this — Generic demonstrative pronoun. Translated as "this" or "that" (or their plural forms, "these" or "those"), depending on the context.
- 3
can be translated as "it" or "he", "she", "they", as appropriate — used as a personal pronoun to indicate that something at the centre of a matter at hand is a certain thing
- 4
Optionally used after a noun to introduce its definition or explanation. In the most formal texts, separated from the noun by an em dash, or (дли́нное) тире́ ((dlínnoje) tirɛ́). In more informal texts, may be separated by a hyphen (дефи́с (defís)), due to typological constraints, or only a space. Often omitted, though usually not when the dash/hyphen is also omitted, to avoid introducing ambiguityrare