- Forum >
- Topic: Russian >
- "Вы в городе или нет?"
46 Comments
It's worth pointing out that the presence or absence of the article can be pretty unpredictable in English. "Are you in town?" is standard, but "Are you in city?" is not, and needs to be either "Are you in the city?" or "Are you in a city?" There is no good reason for this.
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.
I think that the point is that English is not logical in that regard. Unfortunately, languages in general are arbitrary.
- 347
It's interesting how it's not "out town" to contrast "in town" or "in of town" to "out of town"
I put Are you in town or not, it says I need the article (in a town). Does someone know why it is required?
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
What's the difference between город and городе? What are some contexts where you would use each?
- 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.
On the other hand, noun declension is much more complex in Russian than in German.
Is this (ending questions with или нет) as rude/impatient sounding in Russian as it is in English?
I dunno. But then again, there are polite words for, "are you-", so you never can tell.
I was wondering the same thing! Adding the "or not" to the end of a question tends to makes the sentence sound more rude/impatient in English, and I also wonder if that translates to Russian. idk why but my gut feeling is that it wouldn't...
I really couldn't make out what the audio was saying. Is "или" always pronounced in such a rush?
No, it's text-to-speech. There are bound to be flaws. When it said "у нас етсь хлеь", I thought it said "moonah mees flip", which made no sense, so I had to rely on my reading.
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. /
>Городи is not a word
Actually it is a word. It's an imperative of "городить" which used to mean "to fence", "to enclose" or "to build". These days it only survives in some figurative expressions. "Не городи чушь" - "don't talk nonsence".
That has nothing to do with cities however :)
I realized how easier this is to learn when you already speak some Slavic language, 70% of the things people ask in these comments I already know and understand because my language has same or similar grammar rule
- 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".
True. In town, yes. In city, no! So it really depends on whether the mods think the word городе should be allowed to also be called/learnt/known as town. If there is a different word for town ( and I'm going to guess there is) then it probably shouldn't be allowed.
However, in town is a set, known expression, VERY commonly used. So if it is okay to turn words into other words in order for us to say what we commonly say, there is that to take into consideration. I'm new to Duolingo and I don't know what is wanted or expected out of these translations.
Is this pronouncing Вы correctly? It sounds like ova. There is a very clear 'oh' sound at the front which I'm not hearing on forvo.
I thought, Вы в городе или не? might translate better, but I guess not the way to speak correct Russian?
Город is the nominative singular (basic) form of the noun, (в) городе is the prepositional declension.
I just wanna put out that the literal translation is "Are you in town or not?", but the sense of meaning is rather "Are you in town or out somewhere?", referred to a relative Russian native speaker of mine.
<Are you in a city or no.> should not be an acceptable answer; a) No question mark b) should be 'not'
@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).
It is nice that i was able to use the old fashioned "али" instead of the modern "или"
