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- Topic: Russian >
- "Она женщина."
59 Comments
Can someone please make it a bit clearer (compared to the Alphabet - 'Tips and notes' discussion) what the difference is between Ш and Щ?
Ш would be like an English sh. Щ would be like shch. You could try listening to words with the different letters on Forvo and see if that helps. If you're familiar with Polish, it's even easier. Ш is like sz and Щ is like szcz. Hope that helps!
Your explanation was given to me for years, by many, many different sources, and I struggled with it, because any Russian I hear with the letter "щ" doesn't sound anything like "sh+ch". I was always told that "щ" is a sound like "sh+ch", such as the sound when you say "fresh cheese", yet no russian I have ever heard with this letter sounds at all like that! Even when I asked a Ukranian friend of mine to say the two letters to me, it did not sound like this. The best explanation, I ever heard, is that "ш" is a sound made with the tongue further down away from the top teeth, whereas "щ" is a slightly hissier sound made with the tongue closer to the top teeth. This sounds exactly like all the Russian I have heard with the two letters "ш" and "щ". With that explanation, as a native English speaker, I would say that "щ" is actually the sound when I say "sh", and that "ш" is not a sound that I use in English. It is somewhere between 'щ' and the the sound "х" makes in Russian (like the word характер), or the german "ch" sound (like in the word "ich". Of course, this is also a sound not used in the way I speak English.
If you say женшчина then щ is the sound which is made when ш transforms to ч, that is when your tongue goes from Ш position to Ч position. "Х" sound is made with the middle part of one's palate (like relaxed К), while Ш Ч Щ are made with the frontal part near teeth (as well as English SH and CH).
If I hear it correctly and "sheep" and "ship" have different SH, the Щ is closer to that in "sheep" and farther from "ship".
sorry dude, I say sheep and ship with the same "sh". And yeah, I agree that 'х' is like a relaxed 'k', which basically means, the tongue put into position and air passed through.
I wonder about the same thing. What about saying ш like the sh in ship and the щ like the ch microchip?
Ш sounds like the "sh" in "sheep"
Щ sounds like the "shch" in "fresh chives"
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Dash is not used with pronouns. (Although I think many Russians don't know about this rule.)
Ok, If it is a whole name like женщина - медик but, if we replaced женщина by она it will be она медик without the dash or я медик, Am I right?
How do you avoid confusion with Анна/Она? Anna is a good woman/She is a good woman?
Thank you, that's exactly what I came here to ask. Sounds like анна-женщина to me. PS on a related note I'm pretty sure I'm doing the wrong dash, but not sure how to type the correct one
Your dash is wrong but it doesn't matter, native speakers often use that dash for convenience. You won't be marked wrong for incorrect punctuation anyway.
Btw, there is one more difference except the stress: when you see two identical letters together (like аННа, ваННа, стреСС, etc), you should pronounce them like Russians do.
In English people usually see "nodded", but say [noDid], not [noDDid].
In Russian the double letters usually are noticeable in pronouncation: [аН-На], [каС-Са]. Just make the [Н] (or [С] for касса) sound twice more long. Or 1,5–1,7 instead of twice =)
Женщина seems very similar to the Polish dziewczyna, which I learned to mean girl, not woman. Does the word (in either of these languages, if you know) apply to a wide range of ages, or has the meaning simply diverged?
There are several versions of when a girl becomes a woman:
- When she begins to live with a man (in marriage or not).
- When she gives birth.
- When she reaches an age at which it is no longer possible to be called a girl. This varies. Some insist on calling themselves "девушка" being in their 30s or even 40s.
Among themselves, even elderly women can address a group of their peers as "девочки". This is funny :-)
Personally, I stopped thinking of myself as a girl after I became a mom. Девушка with a child is a nonsense for me :-) I was 30 at that time.
So like the US. Would that be when many people would stop calling themselves девушка?
Approx. 0- девочка (girl) -13- девочка, девушка (young woman) -16- девушка (young woman) -25- девушка, женщина (woman) -30- женщина -∞. As in every society it depends on appearance, behavior and social status.
"dziewczyna"="девушка" (="дивчина" from ukr.). "Женщина" looks more like "żona" (rus. "жена").
I dont know how or why, but i swear to God, how is "Она женщине" not "she is a women" when it literally says that that is in fact the translation, and yet when I put that, it says its wrong.
Isn't it rather redundant to use "она" and женщина"? Wouldn't she have to be a woman for you to use "она"?
It is just a sentence to teach you the words for "she" and "woman", and also how to make a sentence from them ;-)
Imagine a situtation where you mentioned of Billy ( a woman) without specifying her gender but your friend called her a 'he' because she own a unisex name. So you would correct your friend saying 'btw, she is a woman.''. One could also imagine some cases in relation with gender fluidity etc.
My question was actually a hint that "Она женщина" is not redundant - just like "She is a woman" is not redundant, too :-)
By the way, if you were correcting your friend (like you described) in Russian, you'd rather say "это женщина" or "Билли - женщина" or even "Билли - это она" (Billy is a "she").
Imagine you're buying a present for a distant female relative, and you would like to confirm if it's age appropriate. You'd ask, is she a little girl, or a woman?, and you'd receive a response she is a woman.
Yes. Except we know she's a woman, because you just told us, but perhaps we didn't know before.
It's frustrating that "анна" is one of the names used, as it sounds so similar to "она". Struggling to differentiate between the two!
Listen to this sentence a few times and compare. "Анна" is stressed on the first syllable and has a longer double-n sound. https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11519409
O is pronounced as A when it is not stressed. Он like ON in English. Она stress is on "a". Они stress is on и. Окно "Akno" Окно "Okna" depends where the stress is.
How exactly is the pronounciation of женщина?
I feel like i need a clearer version to pronounce this using english words.
I typed she is a women. It told me I got it wrong. The correct answer was she is a women
I typed she is a women. It said I got it wrong. The correct answer was she is a women. Now I am angry lol.
