Adding a few kopecks to Yulia65's excellent explanation for zorro...

zorro: Борис пожаловался на то, что ему скучно. Does this mean, "Boris complained about being bored/that he was bored."? What does the на то add to the sentence?
1. Борис пожаловался, что ему скучно. = "Boris complained that he was bored."

2. Борис пожаловался на то, что ему скучно. = "Boris complained about the fact that he was bored."

Notice that both in English and in Russian, sentences #1 and #2 have the same meaning. In English, "...about the fact..." isn't really necessary, and in Russian, ...на то... can likewise be omitted from the sentence. So why do people use these unnecessary words?

Probably because there are other constructions where "...the fact..." CANNOT be omitted:


  • "in spite of the fact that he was bored" (несмотря на то, что ему скучно)
  • "this has no relation to the fact that he was bored" (это не касается того, что ему скучно)
  • "you shouldn't confuse his anger with the fact that he was bored" (нельзя путать его гнев с тем, что ему скучно)
  • "in light of the fact that he was bored" (ввиду того, что ему скучно)


Here, notice that you CAN'T say, in English, "in spite of he was bored" or "this has no relation to he was bored" or "don't confuse his anger with he was bored" or "in light of he was bored," etc. And similarly, in Russian, there are contexts where the pronoun то (meaning, in this context, "the given/observable fact") is mandatory for grammatical reasons.

When I studied Russian in college (Lo, these many moons ago...), our professor explained that the neuter pronoun то , in such constructions, is functioning as a "dummy" pronoun -- it's only there to agree with certain prepositions like "with" or "of" or "to". And in the English construction "...the fact, that..." the word fact is often nothing more than a "grammatical dummy" or "placeholder".