Russian lacks the articles "a," "an," and "the." English uses the definite article "the" to indicate a specific place, thing, etc.: "I ate the orange" suggests there was only one orange, or it was in some way special. English uses the indefinite articles "a" and "an" to indicate that the following noun is not a specific, e.g., "I ate an orange" suggests there were several oranges. Note that English uses articles only for singular nouns: "I ate oranges" (plural) lacks an article.

Russian also lacks the verb "to be," and its declinations "am," "are," and "is."

Thus the English four-word sentence "I am a student" is just two words in Russian: "Я студент." In written Russian, when a sentence has two nouns in a row, a — is written between the nouns to indicate the verb "to be." E.g., "Tanya is a student" translates to "Таня — студентка."