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- "Нам надо приготовить щи на о…
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"для" is not suitable here at all. If you say Нам надо приготовить щи для.. you should put for who: для мамы, для гостя (for mom, for a guest). I don't think there is a logical explanation for that, just rememebr: на зватрак, на обед, , на ужин, на ланч, на полдник (for midday meal, for morning meal, for evening meal, for meal between morning and evening ones, for snack at around 12)
Thanks for clarifying. The trouble with learning a new language is that the learner can not accurately identify what "sounds" right and what does not, so just memorizing and becoming accustomed to what is correct is the only thing we can do.
Yeah, Russian prepositions don't match up one for one with English prepositions, so you're right -- it's memorizing the context where they're typically used and sometimes you have to extrapolate. Another fun thing about them is that the objects of prepositions take different cases (endings) depending on which preposition and what that preposition means in that context.
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From the examples you gave i'd assume для is used when directed to physical objects (animate or inanimate; like "towards") and на for temporal occasions (if you can provide other examples i can maybe come up with a better explanation)
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As per my comment, it's about the different meanings of "for" not about what the object is.
But duolingo gave the following example of sentence: вот масло для риса . For rice. Not someone. Shouldn't it used на instead? Sorry i dont quite get this
My grammar book says that на+ accusative has several meanings among which there is: "indication of time ,duration of the action that will be concluded in that segment of time. So I intetpret the example as "we need to prepare it 'in time for lunch' " , the action of preparing the plate will be concluded before lunch.
I think that's a phrase you need to memorize. It's the same in Ukrainian.
For example, I want vegetables for lunch is: я хочу овочі на обід.
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"For lunch" is confusing you. Pretend it was written "at lunch" instead. This is actually an inconsistency in how "for" is used in English. Lunch does not eat, so you don't actually cook "for lunch". You cook for people to have at lunch. The middle part is implied.
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You have to realise that "for" in English has various meanings that often get split up into multiple words in other languages. The main definition of "for" in English roughly means "to the benefit of". This is what translates as "для". Other forms will translate as на or за. Clearly "for lunch" does not mean "to the benefit of lunch".
'нам нужно приготовить щи для того чтобы пообедать' - it's right too.
I think that if you are going to eat the щи for dinner, it's на. But if you are going to use the щи as one ingredient in the food you are preparing for dinner, it would be для.
Щи (shchi) is a traditional Russian cabbage soup. It first appeared in Russian cuisine around the 9th century, but nowadays it is made with meat (usually pork), cabbage, potato, tomato, carrot, onion, and spices.
For more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shchi Also in Russian: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A9%D0%B8
I lived in Russia for 2 years and I'm sorry to say that this is one of the least interesting things I have tasted in Russia. It's usually a thin watery cabbage soup with way too much salt and a few bits of meat. I'd go for a borsh any day.
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I agree with you. I live in Russia in Krasnodar region. We don't cook shchi here. We prefer Kuban borsh. It's more delicious.)
Then why not call it cabbage soup? I am 70 and Polish American and I never heard that word before. Or call it Kapusta which maybe 1% of Americans would recognize.
Now that you really explain that, I know what to call the soup that I make that contains almost all of those ingredients. People ask what kind of soup is that and I tell him I don't know I just throw things together.
Shchi is what I would call peasant soup. But since I like cabbage (I know, I am weird that way) I love shchi, especially when I am listening to (and adding into my soup) Smetana... Wonder if slavic and classical geeks get this joke?
готовить is imperfective and приготовить is perfective. Imperfective verbs are usually repeated or habitual actions while perfective verbs refer to single, completed actions. Present tense uses imperfective verbs while past and future tenses use both. I'd double check all of this though.
Why is it Нам in the beginning and not just Мы? Is it because it's always dative used with надо?
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The Russian sentence is more like Cooking shchi for lunch is necessary for us, so that's why it's not мы. But they still prefer to put the personal pronouns at the beginning of the sentence.
"Готовить" -a verb of imperfect form, which denotes the action of an object that occurs constantly, periodically. "Приготовить" -a verb of a perfect form, which means an action that a person has performed or will perform sometime without repeating itself.
Yes, it's the same in other slavic languages where na means for a purpose and not on something. I also think the phrase prepositional case can be misleading as it could give the impression that it's used after any preposition. I know it as the locative, i.e. denoting location
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But that's probably not a good idea to spread among learners, since prepositional is the standard name for this case and sometimes the actual locative can differ from the prepositional.
Can somebody explain the difference between приготовить and готовить? Thank you :-)
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Я хочу приготовить (что-либо) means that I want to cook and have a result. Я хочу готовить (что-либо) means that I want to cook because I like cooking.
You would use готовить in "I like to cook" or "I know how to cook" or "I cook dinner every day"
Yes, except щи might be a specific type of cabbage soup. Борщ being another. Both might need to be translated directly.
I typed "It is necessary for us to cook shchi for lunch." and it was not accepted. It is a more convoluted English sentence, that does not sound so natural, granted; but am I right to think that it is a more "literal" translation of the original Russian sentence?
My thinking is that "dative" seems to be typically associated with "for whom" or "to whom" the action is done. So "надо" being the adverb for "necessary", "Нам надо" works in a sentence sort of like a "necessary for us" particle. So literally this would be like "Necessary for us is that the shchi be cooked for lunch".
Your understanding is correct. I would literally translate it, "To us it is necessary to cook shchi for lunch," though I know Duo doesn't like translations that result in awkward English.
I got marked wrong for translating обед as "dinner". My two Russian dictionaries say it could be either dinner or lunch. So my next question is how are the two meals differentiated?
The first meal in the morning = завтрак, breakfast. When you eat somewhen around the midday, it's обед. And the last meal before you go to bed is ужин. Some people eat 3 times a day, while others have 4-5 or even more. If you eat somewhen between завтрак and обед, you can call it the second breakfast or lunch (ланч, sometimes ленч). And there can be пОлдник between обед and ужин, that's something like English 5 o'clock tea (and you're supposed to eat sweets at полдник, especially if you are a child).
Well, the big English-Russian translation problem is the "If The Dinner Is Обед Or Ужин?". Usually there is dinner-обед in the books from XX century, but now that's pretty overdated. Nowadays the dinner-ужин (and the lunch-обед) is more accurate translation. (BTW, I hate when you watch a movie and the hero is going to "обед" with somebody, but then we see them eating, and it's dark outside! Hey, translators, обед is when the sun is high and hot, and if there is a sunset or darkness everywhere, the meal can be ужин only!)
It is so frustrating because obviously the problem is the change in use of the English words. The word "dinner" can be either the midday meal or the evening meal, depending on occasion, class, and region.
As a German learning Russian I easily understand and translate the Russian word's meaning and then have to pause and guess which English word might be asked for in sentences such as this one - a problem that seems to pop up in every course taught from English. I'd love to see expressions such as "midday meal" and "evening meal" being used in English. It would make things so much easier.
Hi Tattamin. You're so right about the English language causing confusion. We have breakfast (no confusion thankfully), tea (morning), brunch (mid-morning), lunch, tea (around 3pm in the afternoon), tea (early evening meal around 5pm), dinner (as you say, lunch or main evening meal), and supper. And some people use supper to refer to 'dinner' (or tea) at around 6pm while others use it for a late evening (post-dinner) light meal. Aargh - apologies for the difficulties my native tongue causes non-English speakers!
As an American, I have always used "snack" for food between the main meals. I think of "tea" as British.
Thanks for the excellent clarification Ivaristal, great explanation. It's interesting you mention XX century dictionaries: mine are from 1969 and 1984, used when I first studied Russian at Uni. I guess it's time to get them updated, along with my 1979 copy of Forbes' Russian Grammar!
so can i say завтрак (breakfast), ланч (brunch), обед (lunch), полдинк (supper), ужин (dinner)?? is that correct?
Because nam is a dative form and wouldn't make sense on its own. The literal translation of "nam nado" is something like "it is necessary for us to..."
I thought the dative for we was "нас", but here we use "нам". Why is this?
нас is used in (i) Genitive; (ii) Prepositional; (iii) Accusative.
Check out this table: http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/pronouns.php
Can someone verify that with надо you 'work' as follows:
Subject (Dat.) + надо + Verb/Object (Acc.)
I'm especially interested in the object's case.
Благодарю вас!
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That's correct. The word following the verb is indeed a grammatical object so it needs an objective case (like the accusative).
Roger, you are further advanced in your Russian comprehension than I. I am still struggling with "prepare" (food) versus "cook". (My girlfriend/fiancé lives in Lyiv, only speaks Russian, and has never hear of shchi soup?
I never heard of this soup before and it doesn't sound like my first pick... :-D
I think you can use говорить for both 'to prepare' and 'to cook'. In English people sometimes use 'prepare' for cooking aswell ('preparing food'). There also is 'варить', which means more explicit "to cook" or "to boil" ('cooking water'). At least that's what I understand, if I am wrong please correct me somebody! :-)
Why прмготовить and not сварить? I would think the latter would be more appropriate with soup.
When the word is written in Latin alphabet, I can't tell what's wrong with my spelling in Russian.
ok, so I thought the word shchi was meant to convey sushi, so I was mad when it was incorrect. Now I see it's meant to convey щи, so I can understand better.
The audio sounds like 'щил'. (it's fairly faint though) Still, I'm guessing the л is not supposed to be there... or be heard?
On a kind of relevant sidenote: some people have referred to listening to the speech "slowed down". How do you do that? I read it was something like ctrl+space but I tried a bunch of key combos and it's always at the same (fast) speed.
I know this comment isn't about this sentence, but while listening to Russian conversations without looking at the subtitles, I found out that it's not easy at all for me to understand what they are talking about. Is my Russian just not supposed to be advanced enough to understand most conversations at this moment, or am I supposed to understand it?
Not without a lot of exposure to the spoken language. Learning to understand native-speed speech complete with parts of words that are dropped or swallowed up is probably the hardest part of learning a language.
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If you are using just Duo for learning Russian, it is not intended to enable you to understand ordinary conversation. When you complete the tree you still won't be able to follow people talking.
Duo is a series of translation exercises that exposes you to vocab, sentence structure and some grammar. It gives you a platform to use with other learning sources.
Could anyone please explain the difference between готовить and приготовить?
My fiancé was born in the USSR and has lived in Kyiv all of her life. She had never heard of shchi. Her family simply call the soup borscht.
I've suddenly entered the land of perfective verbs. It's a little cloudy here, but I'll make it through!
