- Forum >
- Topic: Russian >
- "The dog and the cat are hous…
"The dog and the cat are house pets."
Translation:Собака и кошка — домашние животные.
73 Comments
568
In every language with cases I know, the verb "to be" commands the nominative. Even in English, where cases only really exist for pronouns, this is the case as well. That's why even though "it's me" is commonly used colloquially, "it is I" is the proper way to say it.
757
The rules that people are talking about below also apply in formal English (although they are usually ignored in everyday speech). Formally we should say: It is I, not it is me.
211
I think what Olimo meant is that the default gender for cats and dogs in Russian is feminine. It's the same for cows (vs. bulls) in English.
231
Ok, good to know, but that's not what the situation is here; it's "the dog and the cat" which is completely different.
372
You are right. In some cases we may speak like that, not usually about dogs and cats in general. For example we might say the liver and the kidney are organs. But we usually say cats and dogs are pets. So apparently in Russian they use singular form for expressing generalizations. I remember previously: курица - это птица. Translation accepted was a hen is a bird, not hens are birds. We could say either, but the hen is a bird would belong in a science book.
1701
Hard-stemmed vs. Soft-stemmed Adjectives
Although this comment addresses two genitive words, the information provided will answer the question posed. I copied and pasted it, because I don't have time to redo the whole answer, but the information is here.
(For what it’s worth, hard-stem adjective end in hard consonants, while soft-stem adjective end in soft consonants. I'm developing tables for these endings, with some examples, but haven't finished that yet.)
I noticed that домашних and животных have different endings (-их vs. -ых) but they are the same case and number (neuter plural - gender is irrelevant to plural adjectives), and домашних is an adjective which modifies животных.
Why don’t they have the same ending? Why the different endings? In an article on adjective endings, I found some tables containing these plural endings:
Case | Hard | Soft |
---|---|---|
Nominative | -ые | -ие |
Acc. Inan. | -ые | -ие |
Acc. Anim. | -ых | -их |
Genitive | -ых | -их |
Dative | -ым | -им |
Instrumental | -ыми | -ими |
Prepositional | -ых | -их |
In comparing these endings to домашних and животных, it seems that each has added "н", to make the endings -них and -ных. If that's the case, that helps explain the hard/soft distinction, because the stem for домашних would then be домаш- (ш is a soft consonant) while the stem for животных would be живот- (т is a hard consonant). It's just that none of the tables I've seen so far list the adjective endings as beginning with "-н".
Anyway, the hard/soft distinction is apparently why they have different endings - I'm pretty sure.
Also: the Russian Spelling Rules apply to adjective endings, so, e.g., -ым might be respelled as -им.
1701
Yet one of the recent exercises in this same set is:
"Волк — это животное"
Is Duo wrong here? Should I report this if I come across it again?
968
OK, but what about the comments above? Is it good Russian or not? Is it "too" good, like it's something an encyclopaedia would say but nobody would say on the street?
1701
Good question, because I just did the following exercise:
Волк — это животное
Other comments have indicated that use of Это here is not just redundant, it's wrong - but Duo doesn't seem to think so in other similar exercises.
This course is heavy on grammar. I bought the Oxford Russian grammar and verbs which has helped me. I follow a vlogger on youtube called 'bald and bankrupt' who speaks Russian. He advices that you can get around Russia and be understood without obsessing about grammar, and he does, learn as much vocabulary as you can. If you have the stem of the word you will be understood. Keep going though, this course is worth it.
757
Животные is the plural form of животное. This is an unusual type of word because it comes from the adjective животный. They took the singular neuter form and made it a noun, but all the endings still use the rules for adjectives.
757
It's because домашний is a soft adjective, just like soft nouns might have a plural in -и rather than -ы.
372
See near the top Olimo's comment In general cats and dogs in Russian is собака и кошка. If you say кот i believe it's saying the dog and the male cat. Kowka covers it!
Hello, I just answered that a cat was a domestic pet and was marked wrong and translation given was domestic animal - so OK although I was sure that in earlier lessons the answer was pet. Now we have the dog and the cat are house pets - so is it the domestic bit that causes the problem? So either domestic animal or house pet?
You wouldn't say "domestic pet" in English. The literal translation of the Russian words would be "domestic animal" which can be translated in it's entirety as "pet" or "house pet", or left as "domestic animal". There is no single Russian word that means "pet". Because it is the two words together which mean "pet", you can't leave "domestic" as-is and only translate "animal" to "pet". It's all or nothing.