"Tell me again, is my mom at your place?"
Translation:Скажи ещё раз, моя мама у тебя?
136 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1289
Скажите is more formal or plural, so used with вы. Скажи is less formal and singular, so used with ты.
1098
Сказать - to tell скажите - tell (me)
i want сказать something
скажите me something
164
There are two alternatives for the answer: Polite form "скажите ещё раз (пожалуйста), мама у вас? "... Informal form "скажи ещё раз, мама у тебя? "
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
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
1492
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.
1997
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)
840
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
1385
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).
225
what is the function of the word 《раз》in this sentence? haven't seen it anywhere before this
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.
1997
You have to use the right form of the noun (Genitive=Родительный): "скажи ещё раз, моя мама у тебя дома" - Notice the ending. Check out these forms of the word ДОМ Дом - дома - дому - дом - домом - доме
And correct - the right word is ещё, the word ешё does not exist
1997
Sorry, I probably wasn't completely awake while writing this. Although the forms are correct, but it's the answer to a question which no one asked. The reason you have to say "у вас дома" is because "дома" means "at home", while дом = house. You just can't say "у вас дом" and mean THAT what Duo had asked. Although there is a possibility to say "у вас дом" with another meaning "у нас - квартира, а у вас - дом" . Meaning "we have an apartment and you have a house". See the difference in the meaning? I'm a native Russian, born and grew up there. I'm SO happy I didn't have to learn it as a foreign language. It's a pain...
1385
I think that's genitive and it's what many prepositions take... but I'm learning myself and haven't studied prepositional case yet
1385
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
699
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.
All I've heard about скажите или скажи is formal vs. informal. It doesn't explain why, in this sentence, the formal скажите is incorrect? I suspect it is because of the use tell me again, as opposed to saying please tell me again? But I don't know. Interjecting word please would tend to make this sentence a little more formal.
699
Have you gone to the Russian forum and read the posts that are marked sticky on the popular tab, meaning they're for all students, especially the one about Russian and the Alphabet and the Keyboard?
479
It is incorrect to use formal скажите with informal тебя; you can't mix & match, you have to be consistent.
699
I think error reports are supposed to go to the maintainers of that language course to be checked.
Although, they're obviously only going to look at issues with the course language, not issues with your laptop.
699
When that happens, or you think that happens, I recommend copying your exact answer, using a computer copy to get it exactly, and then pasting it in here (in the sentence discussion) to ask what is wrong with it (if anything is), or whether it should be accepted.
1477
I just wanted to say, I had the multiple choice of this question and had the option of either скажи or скажите.
But since the only genitive 'you' i could choose from was тебя, the correct option is скажи since we need informal.
Hope this helps someone.
479
It's not a "correct translation" because it doesn't convey the correct meaning in English. The meaning that needs to be conveyed is "... is my mother at your place?"
One place to look it up is at openrussian.org. If you look up Скажи there, it will show you the page for the infinitive form сказать. Once there, scroll down to "conjugation", and then "imperative".
538
It is accepted. But of course you have to be consistent: if you use скажите then you can't use тебя.
479
I think because the question is not whether моя мама exists (есть), but whether she is at your place or not (быть--but that verb is omitted in Russian in the present tense).
479
I recommend always copying and pasting your exact answer; otherwise, nobody can really give you any help, as we don't know what your answer was.