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- Topic: Russian >
- "Мне кажется, она хочет воды."
91 Comments
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.
1659
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 :)
586
This looks like a construction in Italian. E.g. "I want water" ="Voglio dell'acqua", instead of just "Voglio acqua."
384
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
I wrote down "it seems to me" and it considered it incorrect. Reported it.
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.
111
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).
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.
1191
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.
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.
600
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.
541
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
716
Воды is the genitive form. So therefore it means "of water" or "water's" in most cases.
716
That's a bit too specific I think. If the original sentence is talking about water then the English sentence should too.
716
There's water in the Russian sentence so you can't really leave it out of the translation.