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- "Tell me again, is my mom at …
"Tell me again, is my mom at your place?"
Translation:Скажи ещё раз, моя мама у тебя?
93 Comments
Can someone tell me how or when to use "скажите" vs "скажи"? The both mean "tell me", no? What am I missing?
Скажите is more formal or plural, so used with вы. Скажи is less formal and singular, so used with ты.
Is that the difference between ты and вы? Ты is singular and вы is plural? I've been wondering.
Yes, вы is plural and also used to address someone in a more polite way, whereas ты is singular and used in a more casual sense.
Вы literally translates as "you" while ты is "thee". "You" was both plural and polite form, with "thee" being informal singular. But in 17th/18th centuries, people became so afraid to offend eachother, they stopped using the informal terms altogether!
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Excellent explanation. Can you also explain the difference between "сказать" and "скажите"? I'm stumped. Thanks.
Сказать - to tell скажите - tell (me)
i want сказать something
скажите me something
You can say it, "мне" was added to the database. Just remember that while in English you are not supposed to use "tell" without "me" in Russian "скажите"/"скажи" is perfectly fine.
Based on how this thread looks, I may not find an answer here, but I have two questions:
1) Why is it "у" versus "в"? How do you determine which to use for "at"?
2) How is "your place" indicated? I'm assuming by "тебя", but I don't quite understand why. I know it is "you" or indicative of speaking directly to someone. It seems to me the translation would be more along the lines of, "Tell me again, is my mom with you?" which can be very different from being at your place.
Help?
I looked on the internet and "y" correspond to "by, close to" and "B" correspond to "in, inside". "your place" is a bad translation, in english it would be something like "close to you", which in russian is translated "у тебя". The problem here is that russian and english are very different and some expression just can't be translated in a perfect way
In British shows, people always talk about "going back to yours" or "spending the night at mine" when referring to people's homes. I figured it was kinda like that?
у is used with the genitive, the equivalent of у тебя is at yours, that's why it says " 'y' тебя"
у has the meaning of "at" and "next to" and is used only as a preposition of the genitive case
в is more like "in" and "welcome 'to' ...", and used to say e.g. at 8 o'clock. в is used as a preposition indicating the accusative case
i hope that helped
I think you could use either while still having the same meaning, but your phrase is different from whats supposed to be translated. I also think that it is more formal, which is something you would only use if you were sure that your mom wasn't having some kind of relation you didn't know about.
скажите is the plural form, to be used with вы instead of ты... This would be way more polite, and thus should be the best answer in this course segment about politeness! Please report it as correct, and let's hope they update the answers.
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But then, wouldn't it have to be combined with у вас in the second part?
So I guess it is the combination of скажите and у тебя that gets us marked as wrong.
I think that since the sentence reads as "Tell me again, is my mom at your place?" it implies that it is informal since it is giving a command. Where as if the sentence were "Excuse me, tell me again, is my mom at your place?" the "excuse me" would imply that it is formal and thus more polite in which we would use скажи́те.
I typed скажи ещё раз, у тебя моя мама and got this wrong. Why can't у тебя come before моя мама?
This question made me quit for like 6 months and im back thinking of quitting again now lol
Do a few of the other exercises in between, then come back to this one. It'll take a few repetitions, and eventually you'll get it.
This particular exercise has several difficult elements in it. Pretty hard for a beginner level task!
Скажи ещё раз, моя мама у вас? is yet another of the answers inexplicably marked wrong.
Вас and скажи do not match. Скажи езё раз, моя мама у тебя would work because the politeness matches throughout the whole sentence. If you use вас you must also use скажите
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But I can speak with one friendly скажи, but I can ask у вас like in plural - in the room, where there is more people
How is the "me" implied in "Скажи ещё раз"?
I kind of want a мне In there somewhere?
"ещё раз" must come after "Скажи"? Why? Why not "Ещё раз cкажи, моя мама у тебя?"
i got this wrong for saying скажите instead of скажи. i thought they were the same thing...
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Duo is wrong on SO MANY levels here! Being a native Russian who born en grew up in Russia, I can say that they give only one translation while there are several possible and no one of the is wrong. If they put it this way: Tell me..., then it's very strange of them not to accept Скажи мне... Meaning same thing, you can say rather скажи.. or скажи мне in Russian, both are correct. Then - you also can say rather "у тебя" or "у вас", BOTH ways are correct, both mean "at your place. As long as you place вас it's OK. If you use the pollite way of speaking, then you'd say Скажите мне еще раз, моя мама у Вас? So, you would use the capital В (вы - you plural, Вы - singular pollite form) So, as you see there are really many ways to say same thing in Russian, all of them are right, but non of them is accepted by Duo Скажи мне еще раз, моя мама у тебя Скажи еще раз, моя мама у вас Скажите мне еще раз, моя мама у Вас Скажи мне снова/опять, мама моя у тебя (yes, you can switch places as well: моя мама = мама моя. so, that makes even more variations of the translation)
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So, since this question seems to create many doubts and a lot of discussion, I'll just try to recap what I've been reading around in other people's posts (I'm not expert, I'm studying Russian myself - please let me know if there's mistakes and I'll edit).
All the following should be correct:
- 1) Скажи [мне] ещё раз/снова/опять, моя мама у тебя?- informally asking one person
- 2) Скажи [мне] ещё раз/снова/опять, моя мама у вас?- informally asking where вас means more than one person (ie a family)
- 3) Скажите [мне] ещё раз/снова/опять, моя мама у Вас? - formally asking one or more people
legend:
[optional stuff - correct both with or without]
a/b/c - alternative options all correct
Unfortunately duolingo seems not to accept all the sentences that use мне, any alternative to ещё раз, and the second sentence. As for the first 2 issues, I'm not sure we are supposed to know those words when we first encounter this lesson (yet it would make sense to accept them). As for the last I assume Duo here wants us to focus on the difference between formal and informal, so I can kind of understand not accepting the second sentence.
Answers accepted by Duolingo:
- a) Скажи ещё раз, моя мама у тебя?
- b) Скажите ещё раз, моя мама у Вас?
NB: it makes no sense to complain about it here, as it would only cause unnecessary clutter and notifications to other users. Just report it as "my answer should be accepted", as with any sentence that you're 100% sure (after checking in the discussions) would be a correct answer (I guess false report don't help much correcting the real mistakes, so don't abuse it).
who knows:
скажи мне снова моя мама у тебя? - why is this phrase incorrect?
what is the function of the word 《раз》in this sentence? haven't seen it anywhere before this
So you can leave out "place" like you can in english. Weird realization though, since I was looking for the word for place for a good while.
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In American English we say "at your place," but also "at your mom's," omitting "place," as it's understood. But in British vernacular you'll hear "shall we meet at yours?" also omitting place, something we don't do in America. But this is common in other languages, namely French: "chez moi," "chez toi," "chez Paul"; and German: "bei mir," "bei dir," etc. So Russian is no different.
I said сказат in stead of скажи. What is the difference, and how do I know when to use one instead of the other?
This sentence is inappropriate. The second part checks if you know a construction you haven't been told about and is not used elsewhere in the course.
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В 99% от перестановки "у тебя моя мама" или "моя мама у тебя" суть не меняется и так и так правильно!
how do you phonetically transcribe ещё ? I don't have a russian keyboard on my work computer. I've tried everything possible: eshhyo, yeshcho, yesho, yeshyo.
I can't find what duolingo will accept!
Is скажи мне wrong in every context? If so, why is it still in the hints? If not, what makes it wrong here?
This sentence is wrong, is asking "is my mom at your place места, not is my mom with you????
What case is being used after "у"? Why isn't being used the prepositional case?
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I think that's genitive and it's what many prepositions take... but I'm learning myself and haven't studied prepositional case yet
What the heck. How do i know when its FORMAL or INFORMAL. These arent things that cone intuitively. Duolingo needs to give us information like this!!!
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Well, you're here to learn, and you'll learn that too. Cluttering the forum with useless comments won't help anyone =) Do you have a question, or you just wanted to complain?
Anyway you can use both formal and informal, just once you use one of the two in the first part, you have to use it on the other too.
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you can say both
Скажи ещё раз, моя мама у тебя
and
Скажите ещё раз, моя мама у вас
you can't say скажите with у тебя; you can't say скажи with у вас.
as simple as that
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You can if you use скажите at the beginning... it would be weird to be informal for half a sentence and formal for the other half... :D
I think this had already been explained in the rest of discussions, please make an effort to read other discussions (you might also learn something else) before asking something that might have been asked already! :)
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both are accepted as long as you're consistent... please read all the other messages that explain that :D
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Why didn't it accept the formal here? There's nothing that makes it necessarily informal.
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It's the difference in English between "say again" and "again say"; you'll never hear the latter. Same in Russian; word order makes a difference.
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I got this wrong because I wrote "ещё рас", because it sounded to me like it ended in "с" rather than "з". I'm having a fair amount of trouble learning to spell basic words in Russian.
