"Is my dad here?"
Translation:Мой папа здесь?
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they are synonyms. but здесь is a little bit more official. for example if you see a house, where a great russian poet lived, you will see the plate on the house with words: "Здесь жил великий русский поэт А.С. Пушкин". But in literature you can find both of these words.
How do you make that accent on the I? It doesn't seem to exist on my keyboard.
If you have the Russian keyboard activated, look under the 'q' of your qwerty keyboard. Alternatively, open up the OSK under Windows and look for it there to locate it on your particular keyboard/with your settings.
"здесь" means the place where you are in more wide sense, than "вот". "Вот" (in sense of here) is used when you point to somebody/something that is near you, it's more precisely than "здесь".
- Где мой телефон?
- Вот он (or u can use simpler answer "Вот")
(translated as "-Where is my phone? -Here it is")
Using "Вот" in this case you are showing/pointing to the phone, which is placed near you.
The word "здесь" (here) can be used as the subject in the sentence, meaning the whole place where you are. "Здесь очень красиво" (It's very beautiful here). But it also can be used as "вот".
Here is an example which can break your mind ;). "Вот здесь" - it is translated as "here it is", which means an exactly part of the place near you are (you should point to this part)
Are you familiar with the movie "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark"? Well, there's a scene in it that makes me wonder if it would be a situation where you could use "Вот здесь." It is a rather famous scene, and one that I would think most Americans will know. A GIF of it is below:
For more context, visit the link to the video:
How do we know that this word is masculine, feminine or neuter, or what are the popular endings in Russian for masculine, feminine or neuter?
As Motivated_ said "моя is for feminine nouns, мой for masculine" Yes but as we see here papa ends in a but is still masculine. This will happen a few times in every language
For humans and other animals with a definite real gender you should use it. 'Папа' is masculine, 'мама' is feminine.
For other nouns 'rules' are complicated:
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There are nine nouns with -мя: знамя, пламя, бремя, время, племя, стремя, темя, имя, вымя. They are neutral and have special declention rules.
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Others with -а and -я ('петля' -> 'loop', 'голова' -> 'head') are feminine.
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Nouns with consonant at the end ('стул' -> 'chair', 'дом' -> 'house') are masculine.
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Nouns with -ь can be masculine ('никель' -> 'nickel', 'корень' -> 'root') or feminine ('сталь' -> 'steel', 'лень' -> 'laziness'). Just learn it for each word. ;-)
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'Кофе' -> 'coffee' is masculine (but can be neutral in an spoken speech).
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Others are neutral ('небо' -> 'sky', 'поле' -> 'field', 'такси' -> 'taxi') or can't be singular ('ножницы' -> 'scissors'), and we have no gender for plural.
Strange exceptions (like masculine 'домина' -> 'huge house') are too rare, don't think about it.
I hope I'm not being ignorant, but why is there a " ' " after zdes'? Should it not be "zdes"? I know I am using an english keyboard...sorry.
When you transliterate to a Latin alphabet the ь which is silent, becomes a '.
So basically the ' is a way of replacing a silent letter? Thanks for your help:)
Although it is true that ь is transliterated as an apostrophe in English and that the ь by itself would be silent, when it's preceded by another letter it 'softens' it. Try thinking about it as a really short, unvoiced i. Meaning that you place the tongue on the palate as if you are making an [i] sound but unvoiced.
I think this thread has the answer
It's like that song says, "Scrollin' Up Is Hard To Do"
