"Извините, где площадь?"
Translation:Excuse me, where is the square?
139 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I'm confused, the definition when you hover over извините is forgive me, though that's marked as a wrong answer?
"Excuse me" would be a much better translation in this case. Nobody stops people on the street asking "forgive me, where is the square?"
Yeah, but that still doesnt make "forgive me" any more normal in this context
Pardon in english works the same way here excuse me or sorry (sorry could you repeat that) not asking to be forgiven for anything.
No, it's french. For some reason, a whole lot of languages use it. A WGOLE LOT. Including Russian.
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Площадь.Not speak: площАдь! Right: площИТь.(Щ- soft; Д - like T , because аt the end of the word)
In some cases, 'excuse me' and 'forgive me' can have similar meanings (just an uneducated guess, but it could be that in Russian this word might be used in any situation that you would use either phrase) there, but in this sentence you would use 'excuse me.' Another one you can use for this would be 'pardon me.'
How is the word "площадь" pronounced? Not meaning to be crass, but all I can hear is "bullsh*t" and I know that's obviously wrong.
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Thats what I thought, but it sounds like hes saying "Ploschyatch". The д sounds off here.
Pronounced - пло́щить (plo-shitь) At that, "tь" pronounced like "t" in the word "Tuesday"
Seeing this than hearing the audio and I see what you mean, I can not stop laughing!
I'd say you're right because "а" here is really "я" ("щя" is always spelt "ща" by convention) and "я" is reduced to "и"-like sound in unstressed syllables. Here's a nice website where you can get transcriptions of russian words in IPA or russian letters: http://easypronunciation.com/en/russian-phonetic-transcription-converter
I'm late to the party, but I have long been looking for IPA transcriptions of russian words. Thanks, have a lingot :)
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И in English is sounded "ee." The unstressed vowel sound is more like the "uh" in "uh-huh." I don't think there's a way to spell the sound on its own in Russian. I belive it's the "schwa" sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Could someone please spot me the difference between the sounds of щ and ш? Thanks in advance.
Not really. In modern Russian it sounds like a long and hissy SH with the middle of your tongue high up. "Shch" is just a transliteration that follows the letter's historical pronunciation and the pronunciation still used in Ukrainian.
The "shch" used to be widespread in St. Petersburg dialect...but that was in the 19th century: to encounter that pronunciation nowadays you'll have to find a speaker born around the same time as Chekhov or Lenin. Another option is to find a very particular village where a very particular dialect is spoken :).
FYI, площадь more or less means area. The implied meaning of square is more like a town square. The actual word for the shape of a square is квадрат (Sounds like Quad-rat, which makes sense for what it is).
You can even calculate площадь квадрата, which is the size of the area of the square)))) 
квадрат is a lot similar to "quadrado", which means "square" in portuguese (but the shape, the place is called "praça")
Tbh, there are many words that sound similar between those two languages! And there are some funny false cognates too, like "кровать" (bed, which sounds like "gravata", tie)
Well, they have the word проспект which is more or less a translation of avenue.
I think you mean the Square near the Kremlin in Moscow, not the geometrical fugure. KoolKat09 gave you the translation of the geometrical figure. The name of the Red Square in Moscow is КРАСНАЯ ПЛОЩАДЬ.
Im remember call of duty 1 "Come on comrades! We are retaking red square!"
Why not pronounced as 'ploshchad' instead of 'ploshchid'? I hear it like that
The pronounce here is very strange in the last word. Sounds like POSHID (I can't even hear the л ) instead of PLOSHAD
Practice will help get your ear used to the sounds of Russian, there's definitely an л in there. With regard to the second syllable - because the stress is on the first syllable, the second syllable changes. Unstressed syllables in Russian get "reduced", so they're not pronounced in full.
So I've noticed that the word for "square" (as in city square) and the word for "horse" are relativeoy similar. Is this a coinsidence, or is there some historical reason (like idk maybe the city square was a good place to keep horse stables back in the day)? Sorry if this is random, but it struck me as odd haha
Площадь eventually is related to, say, плоский ("planar") whereas лошадь was borrowed from some Turkic language a long time ago. So, I am afraid even their remote similarity here is random (I mean, "plosk" is not much like "losh", unless you are ready to give it a lot of leeway).
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I've heard извините pronounced with a sort of "chye" sound at the end. How soft is this "T" sound? In Duolingo, it sounds harder than I've heard it before.
That's what it sounds like. Try pronouncing an Engish "T", only use the blade of your tongue instead of the tip, and try to raise your tongue (not only its blade) towards the roof of your mouth.
The woman this voice is based on uses palatalized T's a bit different from what I, as a younger speaker, use. These days T/D affricatization is more and more popular among common people as well as trained speakers. It means that "soft" Д and Т now have a slight hint of palatalazed /дз/ and /ц/— and it is not considered improper pronunciation at all! In fact, most well-paid actors pronounce it that way, too.
Why ,, excuse me where is the spuare?" and why not ,,excuse me where is spuare"?
It needs an article in English, "Excuse me where is square?" would be wrong in English.
Well my answer was "Where's the area?" and I thought that was true. Why? "площадь" also means "area", then why in this case, it means "square"?
Can anyone refer the russian letter <ь> to an english letter for me? I cannot seem to understand how to pronounce it
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The letter ь itself has no pronunciation, it just changes the pronunciation of the previous letter making it "soft".
This is not to be confused with the letter ы which is one letter although it is made up of two pieces. ы is like the i in fist.
I am fluent in Russian and извините fits best for it as in English it may sound weird saying forgive me but in russian that is equivalent to excuse me
извини́ть (izvinítʹ) [ɪzvʲɪˈnʲitʲ] "to excuse, to pardon, to forgive": из- (iz-) + вини́ть (vinítʹ, "to accuse; to blame")
площадь (plóščadʹ) [ˈploɕːɪtʲ] "(city) square; space, living space; (geom.) area": From Old East Slavic площадь (ploščadĭ), from Proto-Slavic *ploščadь, from *ploskъ (“flat”) + *-ědь, from pre-Slavic *plak-ska-, with a root cognate in Lithuanian plãkanas (“flat”), from the Proto-Indo-European root *plek-. Cognates are found only in Germanic, such as Old Norse flagna, Icelandic flár, and perhaps Proto-Germanic *flakaz (English flake and fluke). Source: Wiktionary
The sound reminds me to Spanish plaza, of the same meaning.
Hi, I need help on the pronunciation on площадь
The "Щ" as well the "ш" Letters are hard for me to say.
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What exactly does square mean here? Is it like the shape square or like the "Times Square" square?
Firstly, thanks for creating a Russian course - I am very excited to learn! I wanted to discuss the first lessons - I think that they're a little confusing. Perhaps if the first lessons dealt with absolute basics such as pleases, thankyous, how are you etc. the initial learning stage might be a little more suitable? Saying things like "He is this man" or similar are quite strange sentences to be using so early on (first unit early). Just my two cents.
Unfortunately, that is not how Duolingo works. We try to follow the overall structure Duolingo's courses usually have—and, personally, I would have completely excluded basic phrases had it not been for some demand for them.
Expressions like "Thanks" and "Good morning" do not make for great sentences; and it is beyond any doubt that Duolingo's built around sentences. Stock phrases would make sense in a dialogue. In the current structure, though, they make fro pretty repetitive sentences and very confusing ones at that because, as usual, set expressions do not make much sense, use all kinds of tough grammar and thus require a lot of rote memorization.
Im not being told the meaning of words before being asked to translate them! Ahh this is hard
I said "Excuse me, where is the square?" and it said that I was incorrect but isn't "Pardon me" and "Excuse me" the same thing in Russian???
I clicked the words in order but they put them not in order and i got it wrong it was very confusing. Hopefully i just accidentaly glitched it and it will go back...
Umm. It sounds like "Excuse me, where is the bullsh*t?" Can someone give me a latin phonetic pronunciation for the square?
Is my hearing just really bad or did she just pronounce изви́ните within the sentence, but clicking on the loose word made her pronounce it with stress on the penultimate syllable: извини́те?
How do you spell square in Russian using English letters? Whatever I try gets rejected
The female vokalist pronounces the sentence like this: извините где площить ? That is not what you want, but correct pronunciation is important.
Cannot type in Russian even if I had a Russian keyboard, which I do not have on this computer, as I am only a beginner who has not learned the Russian alphabet.
no, "щ" pronounced as "sh" in words "shit" or "sheet", and "ш" pronounced as "sh" in words "english" or "fish".
you can say the word "площадь" as "plo-shit", it's a bit like the original pronunciation, just need to soften the sound "t", as in the word "Tuesday", because there is a soft sign "ь" in the word "площадь".
Thanks Shady. I'm learning the language more for speaking, not reading/writing, so anything that helps me with mnemonics that I can remember quickly will be useful.
Oh. In that case, indeed, words like журавль, корабль, центр or театр do have a short schwa released before л or р; it is clearly audible. However, if the word gets an ending, the cluster is pronounced as a single unit, e.g., in "в театре" or "в центре".
Oooh, that helps a LOT! Especially that part about the "re" endings. Since I will probably be saying v centre or blizko k centre a lot :) Thank you!
it is близко к центру or недалеко от центра / около центра and so on. Yeah, в центре is useful.
- Prepositional case ("locative" in Old East Slavic) is actually only used with 4 prepositions в, на, о, при (and rarely по). It is just that the form has no "free" uses without a preposition around.
If you are going to a large Russian city an plan on using the metro, look at typical naming patterns and also colors. Colors are handy. Our Metro lines have them :)
Good evening, where is the plaza? Got it wrong. Been using plaza in other answers and its been right.
I left out an , after excuse me and although all other words were correct it gave me a wrong answer hmm.
I can not hear the different between ш, щ and ж. How can i know to write площадь and not плошадь or пложадь ? Can anyone help me?
(Sorry, my english is not so good)
Well, distinguishing "ж" and "ш" shouldn't be too difficult for an anglophone. "Ш" sounds like "sh", whereas "ж" sounds like "s" in "measure". I don't think you can confuse them.
The problem is with "щ", which to most non-Russians sounds almost identical to "ш". But there's not much help anyone can give you. You need to do a lot of listening practice until you learn to hear the difference. That's pretty much the only way. I can tell you that "ш" is closer to "sh" in "sharp", and "щ" is closer to "sh" in "sheep" (did you realize you pronounce them differently?). But that's not the exact equivalent, just a starting point.
How can i know to write площадь and not плошадь or пложадь ?
You can simply remember the spelling of the word. If it's a new word, you might make a mistake at first, but then you'd know. That's the idea behind Duo's method.
You need to find a site with Russian phonetics. And listen to sentences with "hissing" sounds. Just listen until you get used to it.
I really hate how duolingo force us to use "the", as someone who's first language isn't English I often forget that
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Is it common in the culture to enquire as to the location of the площадь? Like is the площадь a thing?
I'm not sure I understand you. If you wanted to get to the square you'd ask where it was, wouldn't you? Maybe it's more natural to ask "which way" in English, but in Russian it's simply "где".
Curious about the pronunciation of "д" in "площадь". I'm aware that when the last letter is a voiced letter, it is still pronounced unvoiced. So then it seems, the soft sign just changes it from a hard "т" sound, into a soft "т", without bringing back the "д" sound, right?