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- "Мне кажется, она хочет воды."
91 Comments
она хочет воды. I would think вода turns in воду in accusative. Why do we use the plural declension for this sentence? Is it normal for accountable objects like water?
Ooooh, it's a hard topic you're getting into, trust me. Trying to put it as simple as I can, "воды" is used when you want some water (any kind of water) and "воду" means that you want some particular water. For example, "Дай мне воды, я очень устал" ("Give me water, I am very tired") and "Дайте мне ту воду, пожалуйста, это моя любимая фирма" ("Give me that water, please, this is my favority brand").
I discussed this with my Russian native penpal. He says хотеть can have a built in немного (a little / some).
Я вижу немного воды ( I see some water) - Correct
Я вижу воды" - Incorrect
Я хочу пиццу (I want a whole pizza)
Я хочу (немного) пиццы (I want some pizza)
If someone offers your pizza or borsch, you can say "Я хочу пиццу" which means you've chosen the pizza against the borsch.
Well, overall you're absolutely right. :) Though when you choose between two things, as between pizza and borsch in your example, it's better to say "Я буду борщ", not "Я хочу борщ". Your mistake is also that you chose pizza, when you obviosly had to choose borsch. :)))
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That needs some more explanation. Google Translate says that "Я буду борщ" means "I will borscht". What's the idiom actually mean?
That would be an equivalent of saying "I will have the". For example, you go out with a friend and he asks: F: А что ты хочешь? [What do you want?] Y: Я буду пиццу. [I will have pizza.] This will be different than saying "Я хочу пиццу." in the same sense that in English, that is you are sure about what you are eating on the first example, and you are just considering on the second. Furthermore, it is more common for Russians to ask you "А что ты будешь?" when asking you what will you order (in a restaurant or for delivery, for example). Hope I explained it clear enough :)
From what I've seen, Я хочу is like telling the waiter "I want", while Я буду is more "I would like". I think it's implied that there is a verb there. Я буду ужинать or something like that.
We, russians, can say Я вижу воды, if we speak about river and want to accent its abundance: Я вижу воды Волги - I see the streams of Volga.
We have the same phenomenon in French : Дай мне воды = donne moi de l'eau (partitive / half transitive) Дай мне воду = donne moi l'eau (full transitive)
The thing is that it's not actually the plural declension, although it is the same form. It's actually in the genitive or "of" declension, which denotes "some". For example, "она хочет воды", literally mean "she wants of water", which in Russian means "she want some water."
Not just that, also the stress is different for both forms: "вОды" is plural. "водЫ" is genitive case.
So I guess this sentence should really have водЫ rather than вОды? The voice I hear (a female one) pronounces it the latter way.
It is not the first when Dou puts the stress on the wrong place. They did the same with the word spoon.
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This looks like a construction in Italian. E.g. "I want water" ="Voglio dell'acqua", instead of just "Voglio acqua."
If you want to ask for a part of something whole, you say: "Дай мне немного (Чего?) водЫ" The word "немного" is omitted. If you ask for the whole thing, you say "Дай мне (Что?) всю воду" or "Дай мне водУ целиком". The words "всю" and "целиком" is omitted.
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Every Russian sentence seems to me like a sentence being said by some bad and dangerous Russian person, too much movies I think xD
Like "It seems to me that she wants water..." with a weird look. lol wtf is wrong with me
"It seems to me that she wants water. Oy, Ivan Fyodorovich! What do you think, does she deserve water?"
I'd like to put in another vote for "seems to me that she wants water." I suppose it's not perfectly grammatical, but as a native speaker (American) it feels comfortable for me to leave out the "it" at the beginning of the sentence.
I wrote down "it seems to me" and it considered it incorrect. Reported it.
If you wanted to, could you use что instead of a comma? Мне кажется что она хочет воды? Also, is it ever appropriate in Russian to leave off the subject pronouns, like you can in Spanish/Turkish? Мне кажется хочет воды, because of the distinct conjugations?
First, you must use a comma here. It's a rule, no matter if you have что or don't.
Second, you must use a pronoun here. We can omit pronouns in some cases, but not in this one. Most of all, because it sounds weird, secondly, unlike finnish we have different pronouns for "he" and "she" (like in english), so it's not clear who wants water.
Yes you may, as in Finnish, exactly because the conjugated verb makes the clear who is doing the acting.
For French speakers, it's like saying you want some water. Je veux d'eau. You don't want water, you want of the water. So in Russian it would decline in the genitive and not the accusative to get the "of" sense.
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I wonder if the complementizer "that" is implied in Russian, or does Russian have a similar word for "that" used in this context. I want to say I've seen/heard "что" used as a "that" complementizer, but I could be wrong.
Yes, "что" can be used that way, but it isn't necessary. Same as English, both are acceptable: "It seems she wants water" vs "It seems that she wants water".
"Чтобы" means "in order to" or "for the purpose of", like the older English usage "I exercise, that I might live longer" (in order to live longer).
That's what I was thinking, I've also seen «чтобы» used as well. Why no use of что here?
How did кажется become "it seems to"? Казать means 'to tell', doesn't it?
I looked up the conjugation table for кажется, because it seems so strange. Well, it turns out -ся/сь is the reflexive suffix in Russian. So to me, that makes the root казать (which you correctly identified) act on the subject itself instead of something else. Perhaps that is roughly equivalent to "to seem", but it's hard to piece together as a native English speaker :) Also, we've learned another related verb, сказать, in Phrases 2.
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казать means "to show", "to tell", "to indicate", but, as far as I could check, it is not used very often. The reflexive particle can have other meanings besides reflexive, including intransitive or passive. So, you can think of казаться as "to be shown", "to show itself".
Yes. For most nouns, the partitive looks the same as the genitive. There are certain words that have a separate partitive declension in Russian, but the use of that declension sounds "dated" to modern speakers, kind of like "Thou lovest me." would sound to an English-speaker. It sounds so dated that Duolingo doesn't teach it to you and only makes you learn the genitive even when the noun has a separate partitive declension.
could someone please explain to me the phrase «мне кажется»? I guess «мне» is accusative here because "it" is considered the subject of the clause "it seems to me". But what kind of word is «кажется»? I first thought it was the verb "seems", but I don't recognise the verb ending «я»...
It's correct, it means "to seem", the ending "-ся" is the reflexive suffix in Russian. Мне is dative.
An interesting fact pinpointed to me by my GF (native Russian): "В этом предложении читается как [вадЫ], потому что здесь это единственное число Родительный падеж. Она хочет (чего?) воды." [In this sentence it is read as вадЫ (not as in the audio as вОды) because here it is singular Genitive. She wants -what?- water." Hope it helps you, Duo has some weird pronunciation mistakes.
(For) me seems - it seems for me
Мне - Dative form from "Я" кажется - (it) seems
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I know it's ridiculous, can you please explain the difference between Я, Меня, Мне? And when to use each one of them?
я = the subject of the sentence; nominative
меня = used in possessive construction, and as the object in negative sentences; accusative, genitive
мне = indicates the recipient: indirect object of the sentence; dative
Also all of them go together with certain prepositions.
All of this becomes tricky when the sentence structures don't mach in English and Russian, so that what's subject in one language ends up being the indirect object in another. The best thing is to just accept the differences and memorize a few example sentences which will then act as a base for further learning and eventual intuitive understanding of the language.
so cute to see this comments for me as native russian speaker :) my english is not well, sorry ':)
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In other exercises, она хочет воды is translated as "she is thirsty", but in this exercise I wrote that and I got it as a wrong answer
Oh, someone else tried the same as I :)
What's the most common way of saying "She is thirsty" in Russian?
I'm not sure if this has been addressed before, but as a native speaker воды here sounds rediculously wrong. The "accent" should fall on the ы, so it sounds more like водЫ. Remember, it's водá not вóда.
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Воды is the genitive form. So therefore it means "of water" or "water's" in most cases.
This sentence will come in handy for those torture sessions I'm planning to do.
some water sounds like водЫ. and in that case that pronouncing is correct. Please fix. вОды means streams. it is the plural of вода.
I would like to say that in Spanish you can say the same as "It seems to me that" just saying "me parece que"
It seems to me (Мне кажеця!) that the table of present-tense endings we have just been given does not include a termination -я. So what kind of verb is кажеця? Or is it not a verb at all but some sort of idiom: something like 'To me [is an] appearance'?
Is the me part actually what is being communicated?
In English I would leave out the me part. It seems ...to me, or ...to anyone observing.
I just want to know, does Russian sentence structure necessitate an observer. And, in most cases would this imply me?
No, there are other sentences that just start with "Кажется," - so I think it is used the same way as in English, where it is not necessary to say "to me" but it is acceptable.
"воды" sounds unnatural. Pls emphasize Ы not О. вОды is plural ->"waters", while "водЫ" is accusative of single "вода/water"
Isn’t it genitive (“some water”)? Accusative would be воду, wouldn’t it?
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That's a bit too specific I think. If the original sentence is talking about water then the English sentence should too.
I wrote "it seems to me, she is thirsty" and was marked wrong... Why?
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There's water in the Russian sentence so you can't really leave it out of the translation.
Ohh, you're right, "она хочет пить" is like "she is thirsty". I was mistaken. Thank you!
"It seems to me she wants water" isn't acceptable? That seems to ne exactly the same meaning.
