"Борщ в тарелке, а тарелка - на этом столе."
Translation:The borscht is on the plate and the plate is on this table.
138 Comments
Why is there a hyphen between 'тарелка' and 'на этом столе' but not between 'Борщ' and 'в тарелке'?
Scanning the rest of the thread below, I still don't see an answer to this question. I'm curious about why the different treatment.
I'm confused about the use of в in the first part of the sentence being translated to English as "on a/the plate." So far I've learned в as usually meaning "in" and на to mean "on." Shouldn't it be борщ на тарелке? And wouldn't you really want борщ in a bowl anyway? ;)
В can occasionally be translated as "on" but I was thinking the same. I'd want soup in a bowl, not a plate. I'm guessing they can mean the same thing?
We call this «тарелка» (more specifically «суповая» or «глубокая тарелка») and that's what you normally eat борщ from.
Yeah I asked one of my Russian friends, this word can mean plate and bowl apparently. :)
Nice of you to provide a visual though.
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In Italian those are called "piatti fondi" (deep plates). They exist in America, but having no better word for them, people call them bowls.
Yep, you can call them deep plates in Russian too. I think I'll edit my comment to make it more clear.
I always call them bowl-plates in English but apparently I'm more or less on my own with that one :/
BTW, in America I've heard them called soup plates or (less specifically) pasta plates.
If you google "soup plate" you'll see this sort of thing.
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Here in Argentina (America) we call them "plato hondo" and "plato playo"
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Yes, that is their primary use in Italy, for the "primi piatti" (first course or plate, which is usually pasta or risotto).
if I was to see this without context, I would call it a pasta bowl or pasta plate...hmmm. or soup plate, possibly. But the dishes I own that look like this, are what I eat spaghetti from.
Oh, those objects! I think of them as a sort of plate and bowl combination, so I can see why that could just be called «тарелка»!
I would think "dish" should be accepted here - in English, a plate is only ever totally flat.
If i could lingot you i would. Its like a spork!!! Its a blate!! We need to mass produce them, Norrius. We will have a festible too. Do you want to book the bouncy house or should i?
Yep, that's a bowl in the U.S., not a plate. If it's made to hold liquids, it's a bowl.
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I translated this to "The borscht is in the bowl..." and it was accepted.
Yeah, Slavic and English tend to have things upside down regarding "in" and "on" . So for example, when you want to say "Some concert is on Friday" , ruskies/slavs would say "That concert is IN Friday" .
Also, "Please write it down in English" , Slavs would say "Write it down ON English" ;-)
It took me quite a while to get used to that when learning English ;-)
really, how complicated do you have to make this sentence this early in the program?
but it fells awesome being able to translate a long sentence so quickly. at least if you get it right :)
After several months of steady study, I only have to listen to it a dozen times and make three attempts to finally tease out all the words from the audio and spell them correctly. Progress? :)
I had to replay this one literally 10 times at slow speed to piece it together, and still got an ending wrong. My skill level is mediocre but really the automated speech is not good enough for these kinds of sentences, sadly.
Or why do I have to see it in so many strenghening exercises and subsequently sigh everytime I do? :D
I know, it's getting to the point where I sigh in frustration as soon as I hear the speaker say "Борщ в..."
is этом the form of это/a etc that takes place before a prepositional noun?
Yeah, for Masculine nouns in Locative/Prepositional case it's "Etom" , for feminine Locative is "Etoy" (please don't kill me if I'm wrong haha :D )
Useful link: https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/это
Just FYI, the English version of Wikitionary has most Russian words, too.
Well, that's if you want to weasel out and take the wimpy-way, instead of The Glorious Path of the Motherland :D
If this was the proper Russian course, the declension would be hidden in a bottle of Vodka strapped onto a wild bear riding a T-34 tank
"A" means "but" in russian (as told by my russian teacher) but it says here it means "and". I don't understand why
It can mean either, it is just a conjunction that is used to show contrast Dad is at work and/but I am at home. Vs И I am at work and (и) I enjoy it which shows similarity between clauses
Right, so I think this should accept either as an answer, but it will not accept "but". While а is not as strong as но, it could be translated either way depending on the sentence I would think...
get used to it. i can't tell её from его with this audio. whenever it comes up, i just intentionally guess wrong to see what it's supposedly saying.
I heard the B (it is quite faint though), but it really sounds like there's another one of these before 'столе'!
I can hear a distinct в sound between этом and столе when I run the slow speed. But it doesn't show up on the correct response.
It does show up in the "correct response" but it's unvoiced as is the end of "borsch". Listen closely at full speed (the slow speed is to remind you that it needs to be there)
It may be difficult to hear because both the end of Борщ is unvoiced (and palatalized - like sheep) and the following В is unvoiced (like a soft f) - but there is a delay and shift there.
Not sure what language you're coming from but I come from English and I can't think of an English word that has a palatalized "sh" at the end. Best I can say (again, sorry, from an English perspective) is imagine saying "mash veg" but pronounce that "sh" like "sheep" and the "v" like "soft f" - it's going to slur into itself (skip the "eg" part).
I have no idea if this makes sense to anyone but me.
It's the faint ф sound that merges with the т. Since т is voiceless it causes the в to be pronounced voicelessly too
Why oh why.. is the first form of plate, spelled differently than the second?
The first is in the prepositional case (after the preposition в), and the second is in the nominative case (as the subject of the second clause). There are not so many such examples in English.
Consider the sentence "The shirt is on him, and he is on the chair" and ask why "him" is different from "he."
This example would never be written nor spoken in English, it'd be; 'he is wearing a/the shirt and sitting on a/the chair'
Could be an answer to a question such as, "Where is Niel's shirt, in fact, where is Niel?" Answer: "His shirt is on him and he is on the chair!"
This sentence is far too long, difficult and actually doesn't make sense as borscht is a soup and would spill off any plate!! A bowl is a much better receptacle for borscht.
They've explained it above. The kind of plate described by тарелка is more a bowl with a flat around the top. Like a plate with a depression in the centre.
A plate is a specific type of dish. A dish is generally something that food is eaten or served from. A plate tends to refer specifically to a flat dish that is suitable for holding food that does not have a high liquid content. The other common type of dish is a bowl. A bowl will be similar to a hollow sphere cut in half and is useful for serving soups and other foods with high liquid content which would run off of a plate.
why is тарелка and стол used in different ways here? How are we supposed to know the difference? I know it refers to the declension of nouns, but how are we supposed to know any of this?!
My apologies if I am telling you anything you already know!
Anyway, in this case, the way you can tell is by asking yourself, what is the subject of this phrase? The subject will always be in the nominative, as in, the dictionary form of a word.
Be careful when dealing with certain expressions where you might use "I am..." "It is..." in English, but not in Russian, though. For example, when you say, У меня есть...[something], [Something] is actually the subject of the sentence! What you are literally saying is, "By me is a [something]." (Don't worry about how that somehow becomes "I have..."; just trust me. ;-) ) Or if we rearranged that syntax into the more typical word order in English, you'd get, "[Something] is by me," and you can clearly see what the subject of the sentence is.
Another example you'll probably see in a later lesson but that I'll use since I see you've studied Portuguese, is Мне нравится [something], to say, "I like [something]." But just like Portuguese, YOU are not the subject of the sentence here; the object that pleases you is. In Russian, this means it will be in the nominative.
You will see four more noun cases besides the two you're dealing with now (nominative and prepositional) as you get into further lessons. From there, you'll learn how to distinguish the direct object (accusative case) from the indirect object (prepositional, genitive, dative, and instrumental cases), and then subdivide the indirect object. But for THIS lesson, just ask yourself whether it is the subject of the sentence or one of its objects, and that will tell you whether you need to go with the dictionary form of the word (nominative) or the one that is declined (that means, has a different ending because it is in a different case).
(Note: A "case" is the grammatical concept that tells you when you should change the endings. "Declining" is what you do when you actually change the endings on nouns to put them in a different case. "Declension" is the noun for a type of ending. )
Thanks for the careful explanation but, maybe you have mistaken portuguese with spanish!
"[eso] me gusta/me encanta"
would be the example/model you are looking for , i think. There is no such thing in portuguese, since the thing being liked is never the subject!
[edited]: Now after a few hours sleep, I can come up with
"[Isso] me agrada/me apraz"
that would be a valid construction in portuguese, though quite fancy in spoken portuguese =D
Obrigado pela cuidadosa explicação, mas, se entendi bem a essa hora da madruga com o cérebro todo mastigado, acho que vc foi infeliz em fazer o paralelo com o português.... talvez vc poderia ter dado o exemplo do espanhol
"[eso] me gusta/me encanta"
ou mesmo com o alemão
"[das] gefällt mir",
mas justamente em português não existe equivalente :/
O sujeito é quem gosta do objeto em questão, e não o [sujeito] "é gostado pelo" [objeto] ! rsrsrsrsrs
yeah i know i everyone is supposed to write in english here, so i shortly said it all in english at first - but than I felt like being more wordy in my native language, so it could be like an "easter egg" for portuguese lerners =D
I think it's cool that you left a comment in something other than English :).
It's in the prepositional case, which means that the subject is by the thing being referred to, or on it, or in it, or beside it, etc. This means that the ending changes to -e. For example, if the base word is москва, and you were saying "I'm in Moscow" you would say Я в москве. There are (I believe) 6 cases in Russian, and this is the second (the first is the accusative, which basically marks something as the subject of the sentence)
EDIT: I confused nominative and accusative. The first case that most people learn is the nominative case, which marks the subject of a sentence.
Did you mean to say the accusative marks the "direct object" instead of the "subject" at the end of your explanation? Just so nobody is confused :) The nominative marks the subject.
When you go into the first link off of the tree (where you access the individual lessons from), there is a quick grammar lesson further down the page that discusses these things, so you can read about what you'll be doing before you start the lesson.
What's the difference between е and э? To me they sound so indistinguishable so its hard to tell them apart.
Give it time. Honestly part of it is knowing the words. Then you can start to hear the differences between the endings and variations. That said:
Not sure what your native language is, and translating sounds between languages is imperfect but the best I can do is say that the following.
э - it's basically the schwa sound. That flattened vowel very prevalent in the midwestern US but also what pretty much every non-stressed "о" or "а" in Russian seems to become (to my poorly trained ear - spelling in Russian sucks).
It sounds like the "e" in US/Midwestern "get"
е - trickier, it seems to have some decent variation between Russian words but generally it sounds like the "ye" in "yes". But softer. Don't over-emphasize the "y" part, best I can tell it's like a soft lead in to the "e" in "get".
When you say "get" your tongue is relaxed and flat at the bottom of your mouth. When you pronounce "е" (again, sometimes) you move the back half your tongue a fraction forward to produce a soft "ye" lead-in to the "e" in get.
Surely you've heard some American movie villain say "нет" (niiiiet)- like that but MUCH less exaggerated. Like... half an i instead of 4 i's.
This makes sense in my head and to my mouth, your mileage may vary.
Also, try forvoing some words with the consonant+ие ending and listen to them. Closely. You will start to hear the difference between not only и and е but also hear the difference between the schwa э and е. Listening to those (and just generally listening to the differences between the various adjectival endings) really helped me.
Does anyone know, speaking of owning things, if the concept of ownership (Y menya) has changed since 1917? I read that somewhere.
I said "borsch is in the plate, and plate is on the table" how is this wrong answer?
It does not feel like a natural English sentence. I have the feeling that every noun should be translated with an article. (So: THE Borsch is in THE plate, and THE plate on This table...
I'm not sure what your native language is but you seem to have what I refer to as (I am not a professional, just something I've noticed) a "wandering article" - meaning sometimes it appears and sometimes it doesn't which seems common to those speaking Slavic languages. (Possibly others, I'm not a linguist - and please don't think I'm a jerk, I'm not trying to be)
You had the same issue in your question about the Duolingo problem as you did in your question here - sometimes you had the article and sometimes you didn't.
Your question:
> I said "borsch is in the plate, and plate is on the table" how is this the wrong answer?
You had it mostly right. DL is annoying (I say this happily, but with frustration) in that they don't just want you to to be mostly understood but they want to help you learn to speak as naturally as possible - or as normally as possible.
In your answer sentence, in fact, I would think you were totally fine - maybe not common but not uncommon - in skipping the first article ("The Borsch is in/on the plate") and just putting "Borsch is in/on the plate".
But the second skip of the article ("plate" vs "the plate") would be unusual to me (as an American) - not offensive or unclear, just an indicator that this isn't your preferred or native language.
This might be one of those things that you're just going to have to read/speak/listen more and get used to (I feel your pain). snnpt gave you some excellent advice but it doesn't really apply everywhere:
It isn't always true in English that you need an article (British English: "I went to hospital" vs. American English "I went to the hospital")
From an American standpoint I want to say (since we tend to use them more than not) that you should use a/an/the almost always - but even here that's not really the case.
It depends on what flavor of English you're going for. And even then it's really just going to be one of those "you get a feel for it the more you use it/listen to it" things.
From what I can tell - but it's my native language so I haven't really thought about it - there really seems to be no rule across all flavors of English and I'm not sure there is within any specific one. Though my native sub-language is of the flavor that mostly over-uses articles so...
I'm sorry. This is probably largely unhelpful.
(If someone knows a rule please tell me! That would be fascinating!)
I'm not even going to talk about the "on this table part. I have Olimo's post bookmarked and refer to it frequently and still get it wrong more often than not.
The fault is not Olimo's, but mine.
Although этом actually means "that" , I think you can still report this as a correct answer
Those have the same russian translation: столе. In Russian they're the same word. :)
Even when i put the answer in perfect, it keeps telling me i'm wrong. Does anyone know why?
The correct answer is one plate (with borscht) is on the table. Why does this translation is not valid- the borscht is on the plate, and a plate (different one, empty, idk) are on the table?
How will the other sentence (2 plates) will be written?
the borscht is on the plate, and a plate (different one, empty, idk)
areon the table?
I suspect the problem is with your verb tense (highlighted above). You're only talking about one plate (you use "a" and "plate" is singular) so you need the singular "is" there.
It's amazing how often I get this one wrong, and I start to hate this centence
I wonder why Duo transliterates борщ sometimes as borsch and sometimes as borscht?
My English dictionary gives two alternate spellings of the English word: borscht and borsch. It indicates that the English word comes from the Yiddish word borsht, which in turn comes from the Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian word borshch.
Regarding transliteration, there are three major transliteration systems for American English: U.S. Board on Geographic Names, Library of Congress, and "Linguistic" System. Other languages (e.g., French, German, Polish, etc.) use other transliteration systems. I remember when a friend complained a few years ago that his surname had been changed from Tchekhov to Chekhov when he renewed his passport (the Russian government had changed from a French transliteration system to an English one for passports).
Very green here, but it seems from the pronuciation given that this plate should be spelled тереука. I thought the л was supposed to be an L. Is the pronunciation duolingo gives us colloquial or does the spelling of Russian really not relate to the pronunciation.
Nominative case - тарелка (subject of sentence, etc.)
Genitive case - тарелки (possession/attribution, object of some prepositions)
Dative case - тарелке (indirect object, object of some prepositions)
Accusative case - тарелку (direct object, object of some prepositions)
Instrumental case - тарелкой (agent/instrument, object of some prepositions)
Prepositional case - тарелке (object of some prepositions)
Example: I poured borscht into the plate. Я налил борщ в тарелку. Borscht is now in the plate. Борщ сейчас в тарелке.
Why would this sentence not read, "Borscht on a plate, and a plate, are on this table," as though one were pointing out that not only is there borscht, but also an extra plate for sharing on the table. My answer was incorrect, so how would I know to give the above answer, unless this is a cultural quirk we're expected to just "know" - ?
И is not the only way to express "and" in Russian.
I can't answer your other question because i can't imagine myself ever saying it in English.
I might say "Borsch and plates are on the table" but I can't think of a scenario where I would be any more specific about what container the borsch was in.
Thanks for the link; again it would be nice to be introduced to these concepts before being penalized for not knowing them. So the "а" here is the "and"...but this merely reinforces my first question.
I know what the sentence means but the options given aren't sufficient to complete the answer. Борщ isnt even there
Really? There's no Борщ for you? That's weird.
And it makes me wonder what options do you have (they change and these comments often combine "picker" questions and straight translation ones so it's helpful to be specific)?
Regardless, if you feel it's wrong I'd either give details on the options you did have or just take a screenshot of them and report it.
How come in this sentence the first "тарелке" ends in "е" and the second "тарелка" ends in "а"?
Because the first one comes after a preposition (в) so it gets the prepositional case. The second one is in nominative (I think because it's the subject of the second clause, but don't quote me on that)
They Seem to use this phrase a lot. Is it a Russian idiom or just sonething Duolingo made up?
Hey! I answered "there is borscht in the plate and the plate is on the table" Is that not correct?
Can the answer be "There is borscht on the plate and the plate is on the table." ?
Can anybody please clarify the 'meaning' /use of этом as I can't find a piece of information about it, thank you
It counted as an error to write borsh as ворш instead of борщ. IMO it should consider it as correct but with an error warning.
Since there are no "is" words would it not also be correct with "borscht on the plate and the plate on the table"?
In slow audio, the "в" sounds like someone sniffing. Is that an accurate description of native pronunciation?
Well, as far as telephone-quality audio goes, an "f" indeed sounds not unlike like someone sniffing or sniggering.
In reality it is a normal "f", only less tense. In Russian you just touch the upper teeth with your lower lip, applying only slight pressure, and blow the air through.
"borshch tarelke a tarelka na etom stole" rejected due to first a letter. Is there a special a?
Тарелка - It is a nominative case. (It answers the question "what?") Тарелке - Is is a prepositional case. (It answers the question "where?")
I have a native speaker here who doesn not understand what she says because she talks waaaaay too fast
Russian nouns have forms.
So, simply put, the reason is the same as the reason "He is stupid so I hate him" has "him" in the second half. For the (grammatical) subject, though, the form is the same as the one you find in the dictionary.
I didnt have to do anything for this question i just instantly got it right
How are you supposed to know which version of этом the sentence is wanting you to say?
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I hear something odd in the slow audio. в is always a problem with the slow audio, because it mostly sounds like the speaker has the sniffles than is actually saying something. In the slow audio, the в in в тарелке is clear enough. But there's also a similar sound between этом and столе, as if the sentence ended этом в столе, which doesn't make any sense.
I reported it.
