"What does the wolf eat?"
Translation:Что ест волк?
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would 'что волк ест?' work, or is there a necessary order to the words?
Works now-just put it in. I'm a native English speaker and this order just seemed natural to me. :-D
You probably know this, but your last name means "sugar" in German! Yay for learning on Duolingo :D
It would, but it would convey a different meaning. Idk what that difference is. I'm still figuring that out.
So only the ending changes to change the meaning of the whole sentence???
1712
Yupp, that's how cases work. :-) It's similar to the distinctions she/her, he/him (and so on) in English, but not just for pronouns. And word order is less important than in English.
As an English speaker it's just so weird to me that Russian doesn't have any particular sentence structure. Once I start understanding cases better though, hopefully I'll get more used to it.
Yeah, Russian is so much easier in some ways because there aren't a lot of filler words
«Едят» is a plural verb form, while «волк» is singular. You can't use plural verb forms with singular nouns, you should change either the verb (что ест волк? 'what does a/the wolf eat?'), or the noun (что едя́т во́лки? 'what do wolves eat?')
Thank you! That was what I was suspecting. But long time away from Russian and mixing it with german made me think that «Едят» was a verb for when animals are eating. Like the german counter-part "essen-fressen".
Спасибо!
This word order sounds pretty unnatural, we usually place the interrogative pronoun at the beginning of the sentence. But if would be understandable, of course, just unnatural.
Cool, thanks. In English it likewise sounds unnatural, except if we want to stress the surprise of the question (e.g., we just heard a wolf ate the car's tailpipe) - "The wolf ate what?!" It's not really a question, so much as an exclamation of surprise.
Does Russian have an equivalent juggling of order like that?
You could say this in some situation where you deliberately wanted to stress it that way. It works. It is just not how people usually speak.
These questions got me wondering about how Yoda's speech is handled in Russian dubs of Star Wars. Answer: http://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/2924/how-is-yoda-speak-rendered-in-russian-are-there-easy-yet-universal-rules-i-ca
Clips of Russian Yoda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhoVbmJX_Uk
Assuming you didn't mean to capitalise волк, there is no difference in meaning. Changing word order in Russian simply shifts the emphasis a little.
That means "What is eating you?", which I suppose could come up. I wonder if it could have the same non-literal meaning as in English.
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Why is is ест? The one where is says what does the girls eat uses едят. How do you know when to use which
ест is the form for he/she/it (a wolf = it), едят is the form for they (girls = they)
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Я так понимаю, английская фраза подразумевает рацон волка в принципе, а не кого/что он поедает прямо сейчас. Мы, при таком направлении мысли, не спрашиваем "что ест волк", мы спрашиваем "что едят волки" (или утки, или медведи, или лягушки...). Если же нужно чтобы животное было в ед.числе (как в английской фразе) и тематика при этом сохранилась, то нужно переводить на русский со словом "питаться", конкретно эта фраза будет переводиться "чем питается волк". Вопрос "что ест волк?" уместно задать своему ребенку, когда вы с ним, гуляя по зоопарку, подошли к вольеру с волками и застали одного из хищников за трапезой.
It sounds awkward. It would make more sense as a surprised "The wolf eats WHAT?".
Presumably you mean едят, that's the "they" form, so you would use it if there were multiple wolves eating.
BenYoung84 for the win!
This website lists the conjugations for "eat": http://masterrussian.com/verbs/est_sest.htm
i am confused on word order as duo does a terrible job teaching that. this sentence looks like it translates literally to "what eats wolf?". so maybe you were having a conversation about the food chain and you wanted to ask something like what eats wolves? how do you ask that in russian??
This is a situation where Russian is like English (which is not that common). Basically if you have one of those question words (who, what, where, when, why, how) then Russian will usually move them to the front of the sentence, just like English does.
Search for my reply to ErnieIzdebski on this page for the translation of "What eats the wolf?", for wolves just use волков instead.
