"Where is this man?"
Translation:Где этот человек?
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2892
Yes, report these whenever you come across them. Beta is the time they'll be adding a lot of the possible answers. I've reported a few and the team responded very quickly. (Thank you busy team. :))
The Russian "Где этот мужчина?" can only be translated as "Where is this man?" to English. But the English "man" can be translated as "человек" into Russian when it has a general meaning and can mean any human being. The Russian language is more inclusive in this case and doesn't define "a person" only as "a man".
249
You are correct in stating that 'man' can, in English, be none gender relative, as in the sentence 'When man first stepped on this island' but you would not use it about a person if you knew they were female, as would be the case in this sentence. I can see no situation where 'Где этот человек?' would translate to 'Where is this man?'. It would be 'Where is this person?'.
In a certain sense one might say that Russian has the opposite "political correctness" issue from English. I recall reading somewhere in this course about an effort with the slogan, "a woman can also be a человек".
Obviously, that says something about the state of actual usage, at least at a certain not-too-distant juncture.
In short, in English "man" means "person," and in Russian "person" means "man." (well, at least within the lifetimes of many doing this course; hopefully somebody with the knowledge will better specify the precise current "lay of the land" for Russian)
There are plenty of cases where English man can be translated as человек and men as люди, and not person or people. For instance, spies might say that they have their man among the enemies - that would be человек (never мужчина). Or gangsters might tell you that if you don't pay, they will send some men to help you find some cash - that would be люди, not мужчины.
Tim - not always, but very often, it's used either in the situation where gender doesn't play any role at all (similar to many languages in Russian masculine words are used in this case), and it might be used to talk about males only. It might be helpful for you to know that the word чоловiк means a husband in Ukrainian for instance. In English many people would call their husbands - my man. The Russian word for husband is муж, which is the word previously used for man (мужчина is the more recent word, before man=husband= person)
249
Your Russian appears to be better than a level 5!!! In all the cases above, maybe with the exception of the last one, the term 'man' or 'men' is not gender specific and could in actual fact be a female spy or a group of male and female gangsters, etc... We live in an age of assumptions. If someone tells you that the surgeon will visit you in five minutes you would expect a male but it could well be a female.
I am a native Russian speaker, and I've been living in the English speaking countries for 7 years.
I don't know, maybe when someone says - "I'll send you one of my men", they mean - it is a actually a female, but I've never heard that (doesn't prove much). I would argue then that Я пошлю тебе одного из моих людей might also imply a mixed group of people, and оного hear might be a female as well. Человек on the other hand, would imply that it is a male, so again, why cannot it be translated as man?
If you watch movies and read literature in both languages, you'll see such translations quite often. There are plenty of contexts where translating man as мужчина would be completely wrong.
In this particular case, both are accepted, and that is not a mistake.
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I would argue that in this case because the word 'this' is used, the gender of the person is known, so in English there is no ambiguity.
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If in Russian you were to say 'a person was seen at the crime scene' would you not say 'человек был замечен на месте преступления'? If so in this case 'человек' could be a female.
If I understand this correctly, in Russian if you you use the word 'человек', even though it means 'human' or 'person' it would always be male.
No, definitely not. “Здесь ещё не ступала нога человека” or “человеческий род” include both genders. They are similar to your example “When man first stepped on this island”.
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If I understand this correctly, in Russian if you you use the word 'человек', even though it means 'human' or 'person' it would always be male.
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"Where is this man?" is the question but of the three answers you can now choose from the only one that is close is "Где этот человек?", which I have just been taught means "Where is this person?". I have been previously taught that "мужчина" means man. What is going on? Either change the question to "Where is this person" or change the answer to "Где это мужчина".
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Then why is the English translation given "Where is this man?"? I'll report this sentence next time I see it.
249
Not in this sentence. You are correct to a certain extent, as 'это' can mean 'this is' or 'this' but it can only be 'this' with a neuter noun. So you would say 'это яблоко' for 'this apple', 'эта женщина' for 'this woman' and 'этот мужчина' for 'this man'. In this sentence you are referring to a man, who is obviously masculine, so you have to use 'этот'.
No, you can't say "эта человек". The word человек is masculine and requires an adjective/determiner in masculine gender. The word человек generally means "a person" and is used when the gender/sex of a person is unknown or does not matter. In this case, as I understand it, the creators of the course want to draw an analogy with the fact that the word "man" can be used in a similar context. Also the word "человек" means "a human".
Hello, I just want to know: What's the difference between Это and Этот? I'm quite confused with when to use them.