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- "Я говорю и по-английски, и п…
"Я говорю и по-английски, и по-русски."
Translation:I speak both English and Russian.
32 Comments
12
Sorry for this question but, is it necessary to put и twice or could I also say ''Я говорю по-английски и по-русски.''?
И before both exactly means "both". "Я говорю по-английски и по-русски" would be just "I speak English and Russian".
Sentences like this remind me of that moment in The Blues Brothers where John Belushi walks up to the barlady and asks what kind of music they do at Bob's Country Bunker, and she goes "We do both kinds: country AND western!"
Only there is a difference between English and Russian.
Is it possible to use the same sentence structure when listing more than 3 languages? For example: <Я говорю и по-немецки, и по-англиски, и по-русски. > Is this sentence correct? Or is this kind of sentence structure only correct when listing 2 languages?
Did the russians not have a word for the english language before the cold war? Did they just think to themselves during say, the middle ages “those девилы that keep going to war with France, and Scotland, and Ireland, and the Welsh, and the Germans, and are descended from the anglo-saxons, yeah they seem american to me.” “Bro America isn’t called that until 300 years in the future” “Shut up Ivan, I am talking”
The word actually doesn’t come from “America”, it comes from «Англия», which means “England”.
- 1353
And England comes from the Angle tribe who colonized Britain after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Angle(s) plus land (from German)
From the tips page for this unit:
“ To express the idea of speaking some language, or something being written in that language, Russian has adverbs literally meaning "Russian-ly", "English-ly" etc.. :
Я не говорю́ по-ру́сски. = I do not speak Russian.
Вы говори́те по-англи́йски. = Do you speak English?
They are formed from -ский adjectives by attaching по- and changing the tail to bare -ски: по-ру́сски, по-италья́нски, по-япо́нски, по-вьетна́мски, по-америка́нски, по-францу́зски and so on.
And remember, these words actually mean something done "in a certain way", so «суши по-американски» (American-style sushi) should not surprise you!”
There is a и before both по-английски and по-руски, so the word "both" must be included for the answer to be correct
That's quite a free translation, which is not necessarily helpful in a teaching context. One could argue that it's implied in the Russian, but я могу doesn't actually appear in the sentence. In this context, a slightly more literal translation is IMO more helpful to the learner.
OK as a teacher myself I can accept that, but if a student wrote it I would not feel I could mark it down.
A human-to-human teaching environment is a very different situation to Duolingo.
I put " Russian " before " English ", but Duolingo corrected me and told me my answer was wrong.
Well, it's just an app, not a person. As far as it knows, you could be thinking по-английски means Russian and по-русски means English, so you should write in the correct order.
Is the first и hard for anyone else to hear when listening to the woman TTS voice?
Both seems to me correct as и means "and" not IN. Si your correction does not seem right.
I disagree with Duo's use of commas. I'm no expert on Russian, but from what I've seen grammar rules are fairly similar to English and if that's the case, it seems like there are just too many commas. I also think they should use the Oxford comma but that's not a grammar rule, so I can't say they need to :P
