36 Comments
1992
I'm not reporting this because I'm not sure, but shouldn't this be "for the potato" singular because для takes genitive, and картошки is the genitive singular of картошка?
- 1352
Картошка is tricky. Most of the time it means "potatoes". If you want specify "1 potato" - it would be "картофелина"
- 1992
Yeah, once I went through the rest of the lesson, I noticed it was always translating картошка as potatoes. I guess it's like the idea of pants or jeans being a singular concept but always pluralized?
- 1352
I noted above "Most of the time". :D
If you want details - картошка is a somewhat slangy word, you will not encounter it in menus in restaurants, except fastfoods. The formal name of it is Картофель - plural (deutsch Kartoffel - potato), картофелина - singular.
Картофель is also a mass noun, like "chocolate", you can't take один картофель или два картофеля.
Картошка is a collective noun, so it (almost) always used in singular, but means a group of things. It's like family, army or herd. Ever heard of potato herds? :D
Kartoshka is a collective noun, which is why it declines as a singular noun even though it's describing multiple potatoes.
Butter in mashed potatoes or on a baked potato! These are actually very american (not suprising as we put butter on everything).
I suggest "Have you any butter ..." should be accepted. For some reason I was discounted for omitting "got"! Re "some" and "any" in English, these should be fine for plurals and non-countables (e.g. "butter"). They are the plural / non-countable forms of the indefinite article "a" ... which does not exist in Russian. The Russian language does not use such articles, but it would be appropriate to use these in English sentences, negatives and questions!
- 1077
The "have got" "correct answer" in Duo is terribly misleading. It's very poor English in most ordinary and usual instances. "Have you any butter" sounds like something out of a nursery rhyme or a 19th century English novel. Just use "Do you have (any) butter for the potatoes", at least for beginning translations. That's the usual and normal English translation.
Why not use normal картошка in this sentence? What makes the -и appear in the end?
- 1077
Although the genitive ending for singular feminine nouns ending in -a (in nominative form) is actually -ы, the Russian Spelling Rules require that -ы be changed to -и when it comes after К - and after Ш, Ж, Щ, Ч, Г, or Х. Thus nominative картошка becomes genitive картошкы which is changed to картошки because of the Spelling Rules - but it is still singular.
- 1077
Double - no, triple lose the "got" from "have you got butter.."
It's not incorrect English, it's just what, out of politeness, I'd term "low" English. It's the same as Duo accepting "ain't" for "is not".
Картошка is a little less formal, but it's also countable. Картофель is Germanic in origin, it's higher brow but it is uncountable (like лук).
You spell it potatoe and I spell it potato. ;-) "Let's call the whole thing off!" With apologies to the Gershwins.
- 434
‧ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_Call_the_Whole_Thing_Off ‧
‧ truffle trifle ‧ how terrible it is for potatoes to be treated as mushrooms ‧
Kartoffel ‧ From older Tartuffel or Tartüffel (18th c.), from Italian tartufolo, diminutive of tartufo (“truffle”), from Medieval Latin *territūberum or Latin terrae tūber (“tuber of the earth” ‧ en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Kartoffel
- 1077
And here I've gone for years thinking that Cole Porter wrote that song. Obviously, I never bothered to look it up, but then, we didn't have the internet when the question last came up.
Have a lingot for casting a ray of illumination into my benighted musical history.
Nobody cares that the sentence is "wrong" without a word "SOME"... But i dont get it! Where is "some" in russian sentence? ..
In russian it is not used, it's more like "Do you have butter/oil for potatoes?". Also in russian language we don't use the/a, so do not be so surprised if there is something else used differently or not used at all. :)
- 1077
I was curious about this point from a different angle: the Tips and Notes say that Genitive is used with mass nouns to express "some" - however, since the preposition для is being used and it requires Genitive also, the "some" concept may very well be over-shadowed by the preposition requirement.
Said another way - the presence of для obscures the significance of the Genitive case here in regard to "some", so it makes that usage ambiguous and uncertain.
What I conclude from a situation like this is that, if it's not certain whether to use a translation, don't do it. Stay as generic as possible, rather than getting into the specifics.
I don't see "some" in the displayed correct answer at the top of my screen.
- 1077
That doesn't mean it's incorrect. Duo just gives one correct answer at the top of all its pages, when there often if not usually are any number of "correct" answers.
And the fact that Duo might not accept "some" as an answer doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong, either, because sometimes the moderators don't include a correct answer because - well, for a number of reasons, like they forgot.
У by itself in a sense means, "by", "near", "from", or "with." Unlike in English, Russian uses it for talking about possession, "to have." У is followed by genitive nouns like попко́рна or тебя. For possession, I'd reccomend using these formulas:
For <<Something>> has <Something else>. У <<Gen>> есть <Nom>.
For <<Something>> does NOT have <Something else>. У <<Gen>> нет <Gen>.
