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I think it might be worth adding "Dima was late to lecture" since "Dima was late to a/the lecture" is accepted. It claims the article is necessary, but in my experience as a college student at least, it's normal to say the former, like saying "late to class".
Saying "late to class"" is common but I have never heard anyone say "late to lecture".
It's not as common as "late to class" but I've definitely heard it, especially for classes that have separate components like lecture and lab e.g. "I was late to lab" vs. "I was late to lecture." It's possible that it's a more colloquial feature of my university, then, but I did a google search for "I was late to lecture" and got enough results of people using it that I think it's a legitimate phrase. However, now that I've thought about it more, the "the" is probably necessary with the given context in this example. I would only hear people omit "the" when lecture is basically synonymous with class (some reoccurring component to it), so it wouldn't work to omit it for things like a one-off public lecture or your parents lecturing you.
This example is 'late again'. It could very well be a repeated lecture/class.
"Late to work" "late to class" "late to dinner" "late to lecture" "late to meeting" "late to study hall" are all commonly said things (in some, other, people's lives...). It just assumes the listener knows what event you're talking about generally and the speaker thinks it's not important to specify which event exactly. Even if this sentence wasn't referencing the same exact class as he was late to before, the context could be that Dima is involved with lectures generally, like, he attends a lot at the library, and two library workers who know him are gossiping about it.
In University in America, the word "lecture" is frequently used interchangeably with "class" as the latter would pertain to a high school instruction session, and I have often said "late to lecture" to describe my own tardiness.
If I heard "Dima was late to lecture" I would assume that he was supposed to be giving the lecture, but turned up late.
Here you have a short form name "Dima", which implies that he is a student. If it was about a lecturer - then it should be "Дмитрий [Patronymic] опять опоздал на лекцию" So your assumption is not completely wrong. ^_^
I think you've misread daughterofAlbion's comment. "giving the lecture" is what the lecturer does.
About your interesting cultural observation, doesn't it mostly depend on who's speaking the sentence? It could well be the tardy lecturer's spouse or a friend.
It surely depends on who is speaking. What I meant - that Dima is a short form name, whereas a lecturer is commonly addressed with full form name followed with a patronymic. Of course, friends and colleagues of this hypothetic Dima can use the short form name, but it's more probable for a student to be late. ;-)
it's more probable for a student to be late
This may reflect cultural differences :) In the US one may hear of an informal code for how long students have to wait before giving up on hopes of the professor's arrival :) It depends on the professor's rank and extends to 45 minutes (this for an hour class it seems to me). Of course student lateness is hardly a rarity.
To a UK English ear leaving the article out sounds makes the sentence sond distictly American. In UK English 'the' would need to be included though I appreciate there are many variations of English.
After lengthy discussion stemming from these fora, it has come to seem to me that in the realm of university education if a sentence doesn't sound distinctly American or British, it's a reasonable bet that someone of the other linguistic variety isn't fully understanding what's being said ;) [which is of course not to imply that anyone understands anything that does sound distinctly one or the other ;) ]
"Lecture" differs in significant ways in the US conception from the UK version. My best guess is that neither lines up precisely with "лекция," but it'd be interesting to know what precisely a лекция is.
I agree. I've had this confusion with people before. I get the impression - from the discussions I've had - that "class" also carries slightly different connotations. To me it just means a class that you go to, to a friend of mine it encompassed lectures and tutorials and everything to do with a given class. ... I think it's the word I'm thinking of LOL I remember having a very confusing discussion until we had established we were understanding the word in slightly different ways.
If memory serves, what constituted a class for her was, to me, a module. A module encompasses any classes, lectures, tutorials etc that are required as part of that module. A class is only the act of gathering as a group to learn something from a teacher.
FWIW, as a Brit, to me a lecture is a relatively large educational gathering where a teacher/prof/whatever speaks, and the students take notes. Sometimes there's more flexibility or a chance for students to ask questions,more, but it's a relatively formal affair and the interactivity is low. (It can also be something outside of a strictly educational context that follows the same lines.) I don't know how closely that correlates with the American understanding of a lecture. (Or of a лекция for that matter!)
A class is more interactive, usually with a smaller group, and a mixture of the teacher giving information and the students actually putting the information into practice. If the teacher explains a grammatical concept, for example, and the students then use that on one another, or if the teacher has given X homework and the students work through it in a classroom-type setting, that's a class. For example, I remember doing translations to and from Russian that were set as homework, and then in the class there would be discussions of mistakes we'd made and how we'd chosen to translate X or Y. I'd also probably consider oral lessons a class, when we were talking to one another and the teacher in Russian.
(Thinking about it, a class at a British university is likely more or less interchangeable with the concept of a lesson?)
A tutorial would usually be a very small group on something quite specific. (I think the main difference between an oral class/lesson and a tutorial would be that a tutorial usually implies discussion of specific work, where an oral lesson is not usually focused on a specific thing.) For example, if a lecture was on Chaucer or Mallory, then the following tutorial would probably discuss what was taught in the lecture. Tutorials (sometimes but not always one-on-one) would also be used for a student to discuss a given piece of written work (say, an essay on Chaucer or Mallory) with the tutor/lecturer.
I didn't do a science degree, so all my experience of that is secondhand (as well as being years old!), but I seem to remember that they mostly had lectures and lab time.
... anyway, that's a potted history of what kinds of lessons we had at uni! :D I don't know how much crossover there is.
As an American "class" pretty much includes everything as it does for your friend. It also means the set of students who enter a high school, college, or university in a certain year or graduate in a certain year.
"Lecture" is largely a "large educational gathering" like you describe, but is also used simply in contrast to some other aspect of a class (or "module" for you it looks like): a discussion section, tutorial even if the "lecture" component of the class isn't very big and has quite a lot of student interaction. I think some of the administrative details regarding what a student is actually enrolled in differ.
The notion of a "lesson" being something one could attend (as opposed to something like a unit in a textbook) is foreign to me, with the exception of one-on-one type music instruction.
Autocorrect keeps wanting to call him Dims, which seems kind of mean...
See the discussion here, specifically the comment by Zhenya_Melemud and the discussion on it: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11690774
Опять and сново pretty much mean the same thing. But sometimes when you use it in the wrong sentences it doesn't sound right.
Long story short: ещё раз is "one more time", опять is "again", possibly in a negative sense. For more lengthy discussion you can see the link I posted just above.
Not unnatural as such, just extremely emphatic. The speaker would sound extremely exasperated with Dima.
YMMV, to my ear it sounds weird and unnatural. Certainly not phraseology I would ever use.
What if there were a comma after the "again"? It would seem fine to me in English. However, I think it would have diverged from the Russian. For "опять же" it would work, I think.
I believe "again[,] Dima was late" is correct with or without comma* although not common word order. I think it would mostly be used if someone told a story and used it for emphasis - more a "poetic" or "flowery" use than a colloquial sentence. In a matter-of-fact statement it would be unnatural but with the right spoken emphasis / intonation I can also picture it in an everyday situation (sounding either very exasperated or maybe amused).
In written form and without further context, "again, Dima was late" might be more likely to mean "as I have already told you, Dima was late" rather than "Dima was repeatedly late"? But technically it could mean either.
*[I tried to confirm this and only found this: http://www.wheaton.edu/Academics/Services/Writing-Center/Writing-Resources/The-Comma. It says that 'again' at the beginning of a sentence is "usually" followed by a comma.]
@ A_Russian I think we agree on all points. "Again" to start the sentence could happen. It's not common but might show up, particularly in literature. I would suspect the same is true for "опять." After all, Russian's word order is more flexible than English's. However, as in English, changing word order changes emphasis. Duo's stock in trade is standard formulations in both languages. Mastering them is more than enough work for most of us :)
It looks to me like the usage of "опять же" fairly well matches that of "again" with the sense of "as I told you before."
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Many a religious person might argue by saying, "Again I say rejoice."
It may not be common in usage, but it is quite acceptable, if poetic/bookish.
Дима опять опоздал на лекцию. The first word is Dima, so you can already know that the sentence is incorrect. There is not such sentence in the English language. The sentence "Dima again was late to the lecture" would sound like this: " Опять Дима опоздал на лекцию." That does not sound right.
’a lecture’ was not accepted – but if he is been repeatedly late, to any lecture , how would you express this?
As someone who gives lectures daily in a classroom, I have to say that "Dima was late to lecture again" is entirely correct. The inclusion of the definite article will be dependent upon circumstance. Nate896107 was correct when he wrote that we often use class and lecture interchangeably.
