"Я Анна, а это Том."
Translation:I am Anna and this is Tom.
141 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
«И» is used to connect two things into a "list" or a combination (a cat and a dog, "I bought bread, and you, too, bought bread").
«И» is also used to append another sentence that "follows" from what is said before (It was bad, and I knew it).
"А" is used to juxtapose two things that are not the same.
- Это мама, а это папа. = This is mom and that is dad.
- Я ем гамбургер, а Мария ест суши. = I am eating a hamburger and Maria is eating sushi.
- Она химик, а я нет. = She is a chemist and I am not.
- Это гелий, а не неон. = This is helium, not neon.
Just like in the sentence this topic is about. It is also used in "and you?" questions. In colloquial speech questions often start with an "А", which makes them softer and more natural (sort of like "and, by the way.. Let me ask you another thing then..")
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In Estonia we were taught in school, that "a" means "but", so it confused me too. I'm just guessing that estonians use the word "but" a little differently (more often) than english speakers...
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In America years ago, И was "and" and А was "but". I'm taking this as a refresher course, and their pronunciation and changing "and" to "a" is a bit confusing.
One thing that's really bugging me is that you don't seem to use any equivalent of ¨is/are¨.I already knew cyrillic and my first language is Croatian so i can understand this quite well,but can you explain this? If i translated Eto mama literally it would translate into that/this mom,would it not?
Again,i can understand perfectly,but would probably make a mistake if i were to try speaking in Russian.
«Это мама» cannot mean anything other than "This is mom". This mom would be «эта мама».
Think of English using "-s" to make plurals but NO ending to make singulars. Languages, apparently, can have a contrast between empty space and the space been filled with something, if they wich so.
So you have the following:
- Я был в Америке. = I was in America.
- Я в Америке. = I am in America.
- Я буду в Америке. = I will be in America / I am going to be in America.
Note how Russian switches to zero-verb in the present but English does not.
That's interesting,thank you for explaining,i was doing some research a while back and it seems Croatian and Russian declension among Slavic languages are one of the most similar.
-Ja(Ya) sam bio u Americi = I was in America ,bio can be ˝bil˝ in some dialects,it's astonishing how similar Russian is,despite the historical and geographical distance
-Ja sam u Americi = I am in America -Ja ću biti u Americi = I will be in America
Hope the Croatian translation helps clarify my issue,and if i got that right this is only the case in the present?
I'm having trouble hearing the words - it sounds like "дом" to me, instead of "Том"...
This has been a bit of a conflicting thing in my limited experience. Some sources say Russian in general is pronounced fronted, even "against the teeth", which would make 'д' like the "th" in "this". But the Russian recordings I've heard, they don't actually speak like that. It's never that fronted.
German is a decent comparison point in some ways, people say it's a "hard" language. It is, but not in the way that a difference between 't' and 'd' wasn't there like some say. And the most frequent stereotype English speakers have about German is that there's a buzzing "ZZZZZZ" everywhere -- a voiced consonant. :)
Some, maybe a lot, of the trouble anyone may have is just because of the speech synth. It isn't perfect, just an approximation.
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I like Russian because my mother language is Spanish and some words sounds like our alphabet. Many of the letters also have an equivalent Still, just in case I make use of Forvo.com for some words.
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Ana is not the historic English spelling. It's mostly found in Spanish/Portuguese names as well as southern Slavonic names (Bulgarian, Serbian and etc...). Just stick with whatever is in the hints for the word.
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I don't look at the 'hints' because it just gives you the answer. Should I be able to tell from the audio that Anna has a double 'n'? It sounded the same as 'она' to me.
I feel I got another "false incorrect" with this one :) There was another almost identical task and on the forums a 15+ graded poster said that although 'i' is not the preferred form, it is NOT "incorrect" and CAN in fact be used instead of 'a'. As far as I understood it there, the difference is minute and has to do with a sort of distancing or "contrast". Kind of like two people standing together vs. referring to a car and a truck on the other side of the market square.
It would be appreciated if a couple of things could be properly clarified. One being: Who or what are the authorities deciding what's wrong? And the other: what IS the actual logic behind accepting/rejecting the answers? Because of the languages structure, this one could also be expressed as "Ja Anna, eto Tom." without changing the semantics (correct me if I'm wrong there). Would that then be accepted, an answer completely disregarding the particle?
The course does accept transliterated Russian, so if you're not 100% sure why it's not accepting your answer you can post it for people to explain where the mistake is.
Otherwise, if you're on a computer you can search for "online russian keyboard" and type in a box online and copy and paste; or download a keyboard layout you like (winrus has a few options); or enable the Russian keyboard through your computer options (you'll be stuck with one or two similar layouts).
On mobile you might have to download an extra app to enable the keyboard, or you might be able to go to your device's language settings and enable Russian there.
Я means I and you use the nominative form of the name. У (Анны) means either at someone's place, or "Anna has" and it puts the modified words into genitive case. They also don't sound the same at all. Я = Ya. У = "oo" (like in the word "boo". It does not sound like a U in English which has that glide in the front of the sound).
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Duolingo doesn't care about punctuation. You could put a comma between each word and it would still work.
I can see you're just starting out - don't get frustrated, take your time and keep an open mind.
DL's text-to-speech is ... alright at best, so I recommend checking out www.forvo.com if you ever have questions on how words are pronounced. When you get in to how words change, you might check out regular old Wiktionary - they have declension and conjugation charts there. If you're on the website (maybe it's on mobile, too), make sure to read the lesson introductions to get the background and grammar rules for the exercises you're about to do.
Also don't be afraid to read the discussions page for an exercise if you have questions - A lot of the more common questions ("why does this end in -a and not -o?") have already been answered, so I recommend reading through what's already been posted first, but if you don't find the answer, just ask and people will answer!
DuoLingo is a great resource to get your feet wet in the language but you'll probably want to also use traditional resources (a plain dictionary will go a long way, and there are specialized books like 501 Russian Verbs that also explain a lot). This will help you increase your vocabulary a lot (DL is rather limited in this respect).
Welcome!
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It means "and", but in English we sometimes can use 'but' or 'while' instead because that sounds/works better.
а - used when contrasting two ideas. E.g., "I want to go to the beach, and he wants to go to the store." or "I want to go to the beach, while/but he wants to go to the store."
и - used when supporting the same idea. It never means 'but'. E.g, 'I like apples and oranges.'
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/18299822/Difference-between-using-a-and-%D0%B8
In British English, I'm not sure, but I (an American) would use "and" here if it's an introduction. I would use "but" if it's a clarification. For example, if my name were Tim and another man nearby were Tom and someone walked up to me and said, "Hello, Tom," THEN I would say, "I am Tim, but he is Tom."
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I wouldn't use But in any case. And would still be used as clarification. You would simply put emphasis on he's.
I mean you're probably correct. I just always thought the "а" serves a function of comparing, and "и" is for listing things off. I am not a native speaker of English, but "my name's anna, but this person is called tom" makes sense as a situation that would happen in the world. Definitely makes sense in my native language to use the equivalent of "but".
Yeah, it does, in this case it gives the contrast between Anna and her friend Tom. I viewed it as walking into a situation and having to introduce yourself (anna) and your friend tom. The "but" puts the focus much more on Tom whereas "and" has a much more equal feel to it. Im not a native English speaker either, so I understand the struggles why it sometimes does not make sense haha! Then again Im also a novice at Russian 8)
I also put but
, but then again I was told 'а' was more like 'but' than 'and' (because of the dissimilar point you made above).
There is an example where you might use but
in the above sentence.
If someone asked you if you were Tom, but you were Anna you might say "(No,) I'm Anna, but this is Tom".
In this case and
probably makes more sense.
Is a guttural stop used when speaking Russian? The recording seems like it meshes Я right in the Анна - so it sounds almost like "yana" instead of ya anna. It might just be my speakers or the recording - but I know in Spanish they normally do not do a guttural stop between words - and in German they do - so I just want to know how it is for Russian
It kind of happens. йа + анна = йаанна. In case you expected to hear a pause between these words, it is possible but generally people do not make neat pauses after each word :)
Here is the name Яна if you want to have a reference of how it sounds.
As I'm speaking the sentence, duolingo's detection bot is highlighting words in the sentence out of order from the way the sentence is being spoken. Is that implying that there are multiple ways to order the words in the sentence that communicate the same thing?
I can't recall or recount the bot's highlighted word order I saw, but it seems “Tom" and “это“ were highlighted out of order, with “Tom" being highlighted first.
This excercise called "Alphabet" has nothing to do with the alphabet. I don't know these symbols, what they mean,what they are called, aside making up descriptive words hat only apply to myself. I'm not coming into this course knowing anything, so I don't have the advantage of already knowjg Russian. If this is the best Duolingo can do, then this platform is only suitable for Latin languages
This course is 7 years old now. At the time it was released, there was no way to teach non-latin characters. In the 7 years since, there was a way developed that we worked on, but before it could be released to the volunteer-run trees (which this was, until a few months ago), Duolingo developed an even newer method rendering what we were going to release obsolete. I believe it is currently available only on Android, but it should be available on all platforms soon. In the meantime, if you are not using Android, then I suggest doing some research online about the Russian alphabet, as there is no shortage of materials available. The alphabet takes maybe a week to get comfortable with. Once you are, you can come back to the course. If you search the forum, you will find lots of recommendations for material for learning the alphabet.