32 Comments
Is there any particular reason for this phrase to appear in the plurals module?
Yes, to ensure users are able to differentiate between plural and singular. I know it tripped me up at least once.
I thought the same one second ago. But I know why: Because that way you can figure that when it ends with -e, it's a singular, and -a, it's a plural.
Why does it only accept "Here is my towel" but not "My towel is here" ?
Вот is for handing people an object (“here you go” &c.), not describing where something is. It just happens that in English both circumstances use ‘here’...
For a single neuter noun (which will generally end in o or e; feminine nouns end in a and go with моя; masculine ones don't end in those letters and go with мой [which doesn't have o or a added]; plural of any gender goes with мои (note the lack of shortening accent)).
I'm having trouble hearing the difference between полотенце and полотенце. Any advice?
Only one towel - you can tell this from the моё (neuter singular) rather than мои (plural), even if you're not sure from the form of the noun.
This is standard for Russian - o sounds like ‘oar’ if stressed, ‘ah’ or ‘uh’ if unstressed (хорошо has one of each, in reverse order - ‘hurrasho’). Ё (yo) cannot be unstressed (it turns into е (ye) - e.g. in singular óзеро).
When the noun is neuter (usually ending in о or е), you use моё. For feminine (usually ending in а or я), you use моя. For masculine (other endings), you use мой.
The вот translations need to start accepting "This is..." or "There are..."
Not "моё", though. If it is "a towel" in English, it will be just "полотенце" in Russian.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%82
This is the Wiktionary entry for вот
вот definitely carries the connotation of "This is"
It may be true that you can use This is, but, as I said, the best one is Here because Вот = Here.
You can report it to the moderators, and they may accept it, but then you loose the idea of learning the translation of the word Вот.
For some reason, I am entering "Vot moyo polotentse" and it won't come up as correct.
I learned to spell in Cyrillic through Memrise another language learning app. Duolingo expects you to already know how to read and write it unfortunately.
