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I translated this as "Where is a circus?" Is there no definite article "the" in Russian, or is it skipped often?
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Context. It's rarely asked "Where is a circus?", but "Where is the circus?" Makes much more sense here.
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Sure, but still it doesn't mean that "where is a cicus" is wrong. Within certain context, it is correct. It's not our fault that Duolingo doesn't provide the context.
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But since there's no real distinction, as long as you know the translation you're good. Context is super important in Russian because sentence structure can be so fluid.
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One may say "Где этот цирк?" if she means some specific circus or if she was looking for if for a long time and was irritated by this. In Russian you can say "этот" not only about objects near you but about some specific/selected object even far star which you point at: "посмотри на эту звезду" (look at that/the star).
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Do they ever use the number one for the indefinite substitute like in other languages?
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You CAN do it, but I don't know exactly when a native would or wouldn't do this. Sorry I can't be of more help. :(
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If you use an indefinite article in English, you are much more likely to say "where is there a circus".
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Look for the thing that resembles a cafe. Apparently they're difficult to differentiate.
As a korean I am happy to know that there are neither definite nor indefinite article in Russian♡♡♡ korean also doesn't have them
В городе.
«в город» is used when you mean direction of movement ("Мы завтра едем в город").
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i was confused about this myself and found this link that may be of some help: http://russianmentor.net/gram/mailbag/topics/article1.htm
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Without an article, is there a way to stress that you want to know where any noun is as opposed to a specific one? Such as if the context isn't really obvious?
I am not sure, really—some speakers of English say that "Where is a bathroom?" or "Where is a circus?" sounds weird while some ask how would you say that in Russian (the question does not make much sense to me). Personally, if I was looking for any object of the kind, I'd use "Excuse me, I am looking for a ****" , only in Russian (Извините, я ищу ... ).
Maybe something like "Excuse me, is there a .... here?", which is less normal in English (Извините, а здесь есть ... ?).
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"Is there a..." is a very common way of speaking in English. I actually suggested it to someone further up this thread! If there are any здесь есть sentences in this course, that would be the best translation.
Well, there are other ways to ask for that in English, like "Where do I find XXX?", which can be translated into Russian (Where do I find → Where to find → Где найти ...?), but this time round will not be idiomatic in Russian.
there is no the in the Russian language, so to say where is circus is correct, but they make you add the, making it incorrect and insisting that it is
I shouldn't get some of these wrong just bc I leave out an article. Especially when the language doesn't use them.
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Duolingo can't be sure you understand the answer if you can't provide a grammatically correct answer. They're not going to add in nonsensical word-for-word translations, and they can't make many assumptions with an automated system.
