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- "Our neighbor is a student."
"Our neighbor is a student."
Translation:Наш сосед - студент.
19 Comments
'Student' can mean both 'ученик' and 'студент' in American English, these variants should be acceptable as a correct translation.
american english drives my russian-speaking friends bonkers. the way we can call everything from a phd program to kindergarten "school" annoys them. :)
Heck sometimes (at least in the areas in the US that I've lived) we call work "school" as in:
"You know better than to go out drinking on a school night!"
Meaning - you know better than to get drunk when you have to be at work the next morning.
448
Someone please explain why ученик does not mean "student" in this sentence, "Наш сосед - ученик." It was marked incorrect.
I suppose the assumption is that the neighbor is an adult, or at least not young enough to be ученик.
- 448
Okay, but is that sensible? In other words, does сосед mean "adult neighbor" and, if so, what do Russians call the children next door, if not соседи? And how would Russians translate the statement by my daughter to her friends, "My neighbor is a student at my school," if not by "Мой сосед - ученик моей школы"? Thank you in advance for the clarification.
I used ученик, too, and then couldn't decide whether to report it or not. As a translation it's not wrong, but on its own it seems at least unnecessary. If you're talking about a child, of course he or she is a student. Your example adds a bit more detail. But I don't really disagree with you. I'd report it next time I see it ... except that after this I'm likely to remember to use студент. :-)
- 2605
It marked me wrong because I used a longer em-dash instead of the shorter en-dash—and it took a few minutes before finally deciding!
- 11
I always thought, in formal situations where you can't just slip in a hyphen because it's easier, the en dash was used. Looks like the em dash is the most correct though, as long as you put a space before and after.
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11683497/Russian-dash-punctuation
- 131
Потому что студент объекта и сосед субъект, не тоже правилно "наш сосед студентка"?
Since студент is the object and сосед is the subject couldn't you also put "наш сосед студентка"?
- 718
The verb "to be" is actually an exception to this rule (although not so much in colloquial English). The "object" of the verb to be is practically speaking the same thing as the subject and so should be in the nominative case instead, it's what's called a "subject complement". That's why объекта is not correct in Russian.
Also note that in your Russian sentence you've treated this inconsistently. You've written "студент объекта" but then "сосед субъект". Объекта is objectively wrong here because as an inanimate noun the nominative and accusative (the only possibilities in this context) are both объект. Also note that even if объект were animate then объекта would still be wrong because from my explanation above объект should be in the nominative form.
