"У тебя есть масло для картошки?"
Translation:Do you have butter for the potatoes?
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3281
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?
- 2623
Картошка is tricky. Most of the time it means "potatoes". If you want specify "1 potato" - it would be "картофелина"
- 3281
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?
- 2623
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
У меня три картошки. У меня одна картошка. You can say so in Russia it is not a mistake.
This translates to I have three potatoes. I have one potato
Most of us have not learned numbers yet.
Why not use normal картошка in this sentence? What makes the -и appear in the end?
It's interesting that adding "got" is one of those rare colloquialisms that is more common in Britain than the United States.
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!
You spell it potatoe and I spell it potato. ;-) "Let's call the whole thing off!" With apologies to the Gershwins.
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>.
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).