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- "This is not Tom, but my dad."
"This is not Tom, but my dad."
Translation:Это не Том, а мой папа.
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I got a wrong answer for putting in mama somewhere. I think both should be accepted. It's rare relative to mommy and daddy, but lots of people in America do use mama and papa and I wouldn't consider it weird at all.
Well, in sentences like "This is not a cabbage, it's a potato" you can only use а.
If you use и here, it makes no sense. If you use но, you sound like a prophet teaching young'uns eternal wisdom. For example, this is what is used in «Слова́ не ма́льчика, но му́жа» ("The words not these of a boy, but of a man"). Needless to say, we do not have one sentence in the course where it is remotely justified.
- note also the use of муж for a "man" in my example, which is clearly archaic
unlike in english, russian seperates nouns into masciline, feminine and neutral or male, female and neutral.. мой is used for masculine and моя for feminine (моё for neutral but that's not in these lessons). for example if you were to say my radio, it would be мой, and if you were to say my pizza it would be моя.
This is late and you probably already figured this out, but in case other people are confused -
Этот is a demonstrative pronoun and you would use it if you were saying this not Tom, as in "this particular "not Tom'"". Another example would be "этот кот", as in "this particular cat" (which is not a full sentence).
Это is just "this is", like "this is not Tom". Another example would be "это кот", as in "this is a cat" (which is a full sentence).
I think it's illustrating an example of an informal word.
Папа is dad, which is informal - if you were to address your dad in Russian, you would call him папа. Отец is father, which is formal. If you were to talk to a relatively new person/stranger, about their father, you would use отец.
If it were saying "but my father" (which is <sub>socially</sub> weird to say in Russian), then you would use отец.
Does that make sense?
Нет and не closely correspond to the English "no" and "not". You use не to negate things (" is not", "did not swim", "not cool"). Нет gets used as a standalone word at the start of a sentence ("No, I was at home") and also as a "zero quantity" ("There is no bread"):
- Я не дома ~ I am not at home.
- Она не ты ~ She is not you.
- Морис не бегает. ~ Maurice does not run.
- Нет, всё хорошо. ~ No, everything's fine.
- Дома нет кофе. ~ There is no coffee at home.
We also use нет as follows in parallel structures:
- Ирина программист, а я нет. ~ Irina is a programmer and I am not.
- Я бегаю, а ты — нет. ~ I run and you do not.
Мой behaves like an adjective. Its form agrees with the case and gender (number) of what you attach it to. So it is the first row for now.
The word order is important in Russian, just not the way it's important in English. "Не" always directly precedes the word it negates. So if you put it right before "это" you would negate "this" instead of "Том". I.e. the result would be "Tom is not this, [Tom is something else]". Which does, admittedly, sound pretty weird.
Pretty much, though we usually change the word order to focus on something and aid comprehension.
не negates what you attach it too, which is different from English, where "not" is primarily something you use to modify a verb. In Russian, "Я спрашивал не об этом" is OK. In English "I asked you not about that" is odd ("That's not what I asked you about" is a much more typical way to express that idead).
Mostly "and", when putting together clauses about different things.
Sometimes "but" or nothing at all (when "correcting"). It is just the closest thing English has:
- Это Том, а не Тим = This is Tom, not Tim.
- Это не Тим, а Том = This is not Tim, this is Tom (somehow, English cannot just switch the order here)
- Я ем банан, а ты — абрикос. = I am eating a banana, and you an apricot.
- Я ем банан, а ты нет. = I am eating a banana and you are not.
- Мария спит, а я работаю = Maria is sleeping and I am working.
It depends on your OS. Generally, it should be in your Settings (Control panel), in particular your language settings.
You can find them in Time & Language → Language on Windows 10 or in Clock, Language, and Region → Keyboards and Languages → Change Keyboards on Windows 7. As soon as you have more than one language installed, Windows will display a language bar in the tray, to the left of your clock. You can access the settings there if you need any changes in the future.
I'm a native Russian speaker and I disagree. It's not more natural, just a different meaning. "Это не Том, но это мой папа" means something like "This is not Tom, but this is my Dad", as if before we expected Tom to be the speaker's father, and now they tell us that this person is indeed their father but his name is not Tom.
The suggested translation "Это не Том, а мой папа" means that we knew all along that Tom and the father are different people, and the speaker informs us which one of them the person in question is.
Or you can say that "but" is occasionally used for "а" :). It is a bit odd that these two sentences are not symmetrical in English:
- This is Bob, not Alice.
- This is not Alice, but Bob / This is not Alice, this is Bob (you cannot just say "this is not Alice, Bob")
Native speakers usually pick the correct way to connect sentences automatically. In Russian all of the following use а (contrastive "and"):
- This is Alice, (and) not Bob.
- This is not Alice, but Bob.
- Alice is a programmer and Bob is a writer.
- Alice lives here and Bob lives there.
- Alice is working and Bob is sleeping
- Alice is working and Bob isn't.
Which of the languages is odd depends on which you are more accustomed to, but it seems like "but" is a possible translation in some structures.