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- Topic: Russian >
- "Том, Тим там?"
86 Comments
120
Mind you, this is still in beta. It'll be a while before all the organizational kinks are ironed out.
811
It's also helpful for pronunciation. I've had trouble distinguishing том and там, so I appreciate hearing them so close together.
780
You are absolutely right. In russian this inflection is very important as there is no word order reversal, so "Tom, is Tim there?" is actually an incorrect translation for that sound clip
Starting from the first question, asking someone to translate a sentence (any words really, but a full sentence certainly) without showing them what any of the words mean first is not helpful. Things should be at least introduced before you assume people will have any capacity to answer questions related to them.
That's why you give it a try and if you're wrong, you'll know the next time. Language is more than just a set of rules. It's sometimes more helpful to learn phrases and sentences than to memorize grammar. That way you can get AWAY from the temptation to apply your own language's patterns to another language that does not function that way. And it's exactly this step AWAY from pure grammar that has made DuoLingo so popular.
590
Perhaps the tasks with spoken and written sentences are sharing the comment section, I assume.
780
The lady speaking in Russian doesn't seem to sound like she's asking a question. It sounds like a statement.
I believe adding a Russian keyboard at this level would be crucial. I have typed what I have heard, in English letter, as "Tom, Tim Tam" and would've loved to try guessing how to write them (and other basic words/sentences) in Cyrillic script. I think that way one would get familiarized faster and better to the alphabet.
Other than that, I am intrigued by the sentence structure. I think it would be better for me to compare it to Arabic where one can similarly say, if translated literally, "Tim Doctor" and "Tim there?" without having a specific word for "To be".
http://i.imgur.com/4XoD7Ic.png
I found this on the incubator page. Hope it helps. (This was the first question I got, and I'm extremely &^%$%^&, and I'm procrastinating...so...)
518
Is there any way to distinguish between saying "Is Tim there?" and "Tim is there." besides inflexion?
570
This is a stupid sentence in Russian because Tim and Tom aren't russian names. You can see such sentences only here. But it sounds funny)). Sorry for my English, I just study it.
Funny, when one uses just "there" it gives "Another solution" with "over there". So I used it here and it's wrong...