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- "Да, это я."
96 Comments
Not really. It means "I", which is to say it represents the subject of the sentence and the nominative case. The confusing thing here is in English: we can use "me" (normally the object form, the accusative case) as the default when there's no verb in the sentence and thus no subject–object distinction: "It's me".
Logically, looking at English from the outside, you might expect "It's I". This is what led to the notion in English that you should say "It's I", and not "It's me", as well as other similar forms like "you and I".
Russian uses the nominative here: "это я" ("it is I") rather than the accusative: *"это мне" ("It's me").
"It is I" is technically the correct way to say it in English as well, but no one says it like that.
Yes. English very frequently has differences in what is "technically" correct and what is commonly used.
That's because "technically" doesn't mean anything other than "traditionally".
Yes. Don't trust a grammar book that suggests you can't say "It is me". It's totally natural English (if a little strange to speakers of languages with nominative-accusative distinctions).
French also does the same thing: c'est moi (never *c'est je).
However, in portuguese it's "Sou eu", and not "Sou mim". The reason is the same as ataltane explained up there, Eu (I) is the subject, the actor of the sentence. Mim (me) is the object.
It's false. It has become trendy to point out "grammatical mistakes" by assimilating English to other Germanic languages' grammars and conclude stuff by comparison.
But there's more to that, nominative-oblique isn't all there is at a grammatical level.
It's me is grammatically correct English.
72
I say "It is I" part of the time, but then I'm an old lady. And when asked for by name on the phone, I always say, "This is she." Usage varies.
Then you are in fact being technically correct, as you are using the nominative. Rewriting that sentence to first person yields 'This is I', whereas were you to say 'This is me' in third person, it would be 'This is her'.
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I commonly hear "This is she" (usually on the phone when I've asked to speak to a particular woman). Correct grammar is not found only in grammar books.
Some of us say "It is I", "it is he" etc. It depends on how well we were taught English!
- 244
The one that annoys me is when people use 'I' when it ought to be 'me', e.g. 'He met Louise and I for lunch.' It seems to be that some people think that you use 'I' when you talk about yourself plus someone else together. Still, things like that provide little clues about the person who has said it. Another one is 'its' and 'it's'. If someone whose native language is English hasn't managed to grasp the difference by the age of 57, either they don't care or are not very bright. (Yes, I'm talking about my boss.)
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Though in Dickens' time, I suppose they would have: "It is I, sir, by Jove!", said Mr. Pickwick.
Right. I meant to imply that you'd expect "It is I" but that ... you'd be wrong.
Of course, some people say it under the influence of such an expectation and the (IMHO) nonsensical grammatical tradition that has grown up around it, but it's safe to say that it's a hypercorrective oddity at worst or a formal variant at best.
It whole incorrect to say it a "hypercorrective oddity". The verb "to be" is a copula and it [nominative is nominative ]. The reason "me" is used instead of "I" is that people have lost their understanding of when to use nominative and when to use accusative. Given that modern English has so little inflection, this is not a surprise.
- 244
True. It is the same in Latin. It is because the 'It' and 'I' have equivalence, so the nominative case is the correct case to use (the subject being 'It' and 'I' being equivalent to it). Saying it grammatically correctly sounds overly dramatic to many, so using 'me' is more common (athough technically incorrect).
There is a verb in “It’s I” or “It’s me”. The verb is “is”, conjugated for the third-person singular from the infinitive “to be”. The third-person singular pronoun here is “it”, which determines the conjugation of “to be”.
Not necessarily. Using "me" in this sentence is just a weird irregularity we got from French "C'est moi". Russian has it straight. They say what is technically "It is I," since "я" is in the nominative case, "Это я." "Me/my" is "меня," since it is the accusative-genitive form.
a and я are different sounds. я sounds like in the english word "yard", and a like in "what"
Depending on its location in a word relative to stressed syllables, certain consonants, and hard/soft signs, "я" can sound like "и," "ə," "е," and "а" instead. :P
Can the "official" translation in English not be "It's me" because that is technically wrong English grammar and it makes me cringe when I see it.
It's not "wrong" by any means; merely persecuted. And inconsistently at that: no one would say "it is they".
It is wrong, because it uses the accusative form as a predicate nominative. If anything, it is at least technically wrong.
It's not really wrong. We just pulled this accusative phrase from French, where "C'est moi" is correct. Therefore, "It is me" is correct. Besides, "me" in that sentence could be said to be the "object" of "is," even if the verb "to be" is technically intransitive.
That's not what grammars of English say. For example, here's the explanation from Huddleson & Pullum's "Student's Introduction to English Grammar":
p.73 The next kind of dependent of the verb we consider is the Predicative Complement (PC). A PC commonly has the form of an NP (=noun phrase), and in that case it contrasts directly with an object (O). Look at these [a] and [b] pairs:
ia. Stacy was a good speaker (PC)
ib. Stacy found a good speaker (O)
iia. Lee became a friend of mine (PC) iib. Lee insulted a friend of mine (O)
There is a sharp semantic distinction in elemenary examples of this kind. The object NPs refer to PARTICIPANTS in the situation: in each of [ib] and [iib] there are two people involved. The predicative NPs, however, do not refer to participants like this. There is only a single person involved in the [a] examples, the one referred to by the subject NP. The predicative complement NP denotes a PROPERTY that is ascribed to this person. PCs are most clearly illustrated by examples like [ia] . The verb be here has basically no semantic content. It is quite common in other languages for the verb to be completely missing in this kind of construction. The most important thing that be does in this example is to carry the preterite tense inflection that indicates reference to past time. The meaning of the clause is really just that Stacy spoke in an entertaining manner. So although "a good speaker" is syntactically an NP complement, it is semantically comparable to a predicate like "spoke well". This is the basis for the term 'predicative complement' : the complement typically represents what is predicated of the subject-referent in a way that is similar to that in which a whole predicate does.
Then, on p.75...
There is a rather formal style of English in which the pronouns listed in [7] (=I/me he/him she/her we/us they/them) can appear in the nominative case when functioning as PC, while objects allow only accusative case:
a. It was he (PC) who said it.
b. They accused him (O) of lying
The point here is not that nominative case is required on pronouns in PC function. Some older prescriptive grammars say that, but it is not true. A question like "Who 's there?" is normally answered "It's me"; it sounds very stiff and formal to say "It is I". Many speakers of Standard English would say "It was him who said it" rather than [24a] . So NPs in PC function can be accusative pronouns. What separates PC from O, however, is that no matter whether you use nominative or accusative case on PC pronouns, nominative case is absolutely impossible for O pronouns. No native speaker, even in the most formal style, says They accused I of saying it, or Please let I in?
Since accused and let are not state of being verbs, they would not take the nominative. They are actions and would take accusative.
That said, I would say, "It was he they accused" and "It was him." Yet people say German is difficult.
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I'd cringe if I heard "It is I" being used casually in any media set in the modern day.
Poor English grammar. It should translate, "Yes, it is I." It's confusing to mixup pronoun cases when trying to learn a new language.
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So, I've hit a general wall and am coming back and refreshing myself on all these lessons before attempting to proceed in the tree. Previously I was focused on the letters and sounds - but now I have questions on aesthetics.
- In English, we capitalize I because it is kind of a proper pronoun. Does Russian not have that convention with the word я? Would, "Да, это Я" look blatantly weird to a native Russian speaker/writer? Which brings me to a second question-
- In English, I would capitalize mom if I were to refer to her directly - using it as a name - "I want an apple, Mom." I would not capitalize mom if I were to use it in reference to a general mother-figure - "your mom" (an English phrase used frequently when speaking to my brother, much to our mother's amusement....) Does Russian follow such capitalization conventions? ("Я хочу яблоко, Мама." "Твоя мама goes to college," etc.)
I realize that capitalization and punctuation are not generally Duolingo's concern. I'm just curious for my own sake. Thanks!
The answers are no and no. We do not treat я and мама/папа as special words.
In Russian it is also customary to not capitalize month names, nationalities and ethnic group names. In essense, names of countries or towns are proper nouns but their derivatives are not proper nouns or adjectives.
- the exception is when the whole combination is a proper noun. For example, Тульская область is not just a part of a country which is of an exquisite Tula quality. It is the legally established region around the city of Tula.
When writing a title of a book or a movie, we only capitalise the first word (as if it were the first word in the sentence). The rest of the title follows normal capitalisation rules: proper nouns are start with uppercase letters, and other words don't.
I'll answer my own question. It appears that eto is not a word but Duo accepts it as a typo that is close enough.
Hi guys, I'm a Spanish speaker that wants ti know Russian, but this is hard for me, taking from English (I'm need practice English too) so, do you have some suggestions?.
There is a Russian for Spanish speakers coming out, if you look at Duolingo Incubator. So don't learn Russian now and wait for that course, or, if you need to learn Russian, focus on English and then learn Russian when you are better ;)
Im having trouble with the pronunciation of я. Im native english and it sounds like 'yea' with a bit of a 'c' at the beginning. Cyea
Jaja por que las personas aprenden ruso en ingles? Simpre there's not "spanish - russian"
Does я sound phonetically the same as иа? How do I know which to use in a word?
This is me or It is me is the same. Should not be an error for using "This is me" as translation to English.
'o' without the accent can sound like 'a' (now always). 'o' with the accent sounds only as 'o'.
