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- "Вы в городе или нет?"
46 Comments
408
In town and out of town are fixed expressions in English.
"Are you in the city?" and "Are you in a city?" mean totally different things so it is important to know the difference if you are learning English.
347
It's interesting how it's not "out town" to contrast "in town" or "in of town" to "out of town"
wondering that too it's a normal translation so should be accepted, especially since one russian sentence can have 3 or more translations in english
10
город is in the nominative case, so it would be used if "city" is the subject of a sentence, eg "The city is big."
городе is the same word, but in the locative case, so if something is in/on/at the city, like in the example above.
408
Cases can be difficult to learn, though I think in Russian it will be easier than it is in German. In German the word "the" can have 16 distinct meanings and "a" or "one" can have 12. All of that is omitted in Russian.
Городи is not a word or declension of город.
- город - Nominative singular - Это мой город - This is my city. /
- города - Genitive singular - В стране нет одного большого города - There is not a single big city in the country. /
- городу - Dative singular - Мы ехали к городу - We were driving towards the city. /
- город - Accusative singular - Мы приехали в город. - We arrived at the city. /
- городом - Instrumental singular - Мы летим над городом - We are flying over the city. /
- городе - Prepositional singular - Здание находится в городе - The building is located in the city. /
- города - Nominative plural - В Канаде красивые города - There are beautiful cities in Canada. /
- городов - Genitive plural - Это карта без городов - It is a map without cities. /
- городам - Dative plural - Мы гуляли по многим городам - We walked around many cities. /
- города - Accusative plural - Я вижу города там, там, и там. - I see cities there, there and there. /
- городами - Instrumental plural - Мы летели над всеми городами - We flew above all the cities. /
- городах - Prepositional plural - Во многих городах избирают мэра - They elect a mayor in many cities. /
10
An article is definitely required if you translate городе as "city". You can either be "in a city" or "in the city", but you can't just be "in city".
@AClockwork 2 - It's said, but it, like many prepositions, tends to get pronounced with the word following it. If the following syllable starts with a consonant, then it also won't be a hard "V" sound, but more of a lighter, hybrid... f-v sound. Like "fgor-o-de".
You can hear this in words like вчера (which sounds more like "fchera") or вторник ("ftornik"). Also makes pronunciation important - вчера ("fchera" / yesterday) is not the same as вечер/вечера ("vecher" / evening).