67 Comments
the case - we are learning the prepositional case here (see tips and notes). тарелка - nominative case, в тарелке - prepositional case.
тарелка is the nominative form of plate тарелке is the PREPOSITIONAL form of plate.
Ex: Тарелка уже на столе. = The plate is already on (or literally "at") the table.
<pre> Хлеб уже на тарелке. =Bread is already on the plate.
</pre>
In the first sentence, the plate is the subject of the sentence, the very first part of the sentence, we are talking about the plate, while in the second sentence, the plate is no longer the subject. The subject is now bread. Plate has a prepositional ending due to "на" before it (or any other Russian preposition before it). Since it has "на" before it, we have to say "on the plate" or "at the plate" (I can't think of a sentence which it is alright to use "at an object").
Forgive me for any mistakes in those sentences, I am learning Russian too. I hope this helped! ^_^
This is a month old, but I thought it might be useful to note that:
- «на» literally means "on".
- Not all prepositions take the Prepositional case. In fact, even «на» can take the Accusative if used in the sense of "onto": «Я кладу хлеб на тарелку».
Why would all prepositions use the Prepositional case? Only four or five ever use it, of which one is an outdated usage associated with certain formal phrases..
Plate has a prepositional ending due to "на" before it (or any other Russian preposition before it).
"Хлеб уже на тарелке и тарелка уже на столе." would be correct?
"dish" ≈ "блюдо" (sounds a bit like "blue dough" or "blue door" without the R sound :D). In Russian the word "блюдо" means both the food on the plate and big plate itself. "Тарелка" is more similar to "plate", it means only the plate itself, you cannot call the food "тарелка", but you can call it "блюдо".
— Что это за блюдо? (What is that dish?)
— Это крабовый салат. (That's crab salad.)
and
— Что это за блюдо? (What is that dish?)
— Наследство от бабушки. (Inheritance from [my] grandma.)
1130
Pronunciation at forvo.com and reverso.net sounds more like "blue-dah" not "blue-dough". Makes sense, since the o at the end is unstressed and should get the a sound.
Are you a native speaker?
Plate, Dish, Тарелка- The object that holds food. Dish ,блюдо- Part of a meal (plate+food).
Granted the other explanations re plate vs. dish. However, if you are translating from Russian into English, I would think "dish" would work as well as "тарелка", since in English, "dish" can mean either the food itself or simply the container. That's why we "wash the dishes" without meaning we are also washing the food! And, since "тарелка" can apparently mean either plate or bowl (from another discussion), I would think "dish" would not only be acceptable, but also more precise when, as in this case, we don't know whether the bread is on a plate or in a bowl. IMO
I'm an American. Bread on a plate is fine. If I'm not referring to specific bread, I can say bread and have used bread without an article several times in this sentence. You would not say "a bread", that's just wrong, and "the bread" implies specific bread.
-
I bought bread. The bread (I bought) is on a/the plate.
-
There is bread on a plate in the kitchen.
The trouble is that Duolingo often gives us phrases as well as complete sentences. How are we to know if it is a sentence or not? "Bread on the plate" was accepted for me as correct by Duolingo. Thank you for reminding me that it could also be "Bread is on the plate." or "Bread is on a plate." Looking again at the Russian, I see that our clue is that there is a period (or full stop as some call it) at the end of the "sentence". I can't judge by the first letter being capitalized, because they do that even for the phrases in many Duolingo courses. I will look for that in the future, but it could easily be overlooked as I had just overlooked it.
Edit: Thank you below to Shady_arc, I will look for the first letter not being capitalized in the Russian course.
In the Russian course, phrases do not capitalize the first letter and have no full stop at the end:
- два человека → a phrase
- Это молоко. → a sentence
This difference is exactly to help you differentiate between simple grammar exercises ("Say five windows in Russian") and complete sentences—whereas in the English course unsentences are somehow given as if they were typical English sentences.
No, there's nothing in the Russian that makes this "the plate" rather than "a plate".
The pronunciation of тарелке is different between the regular and slow pronunciation speeds. It's correct in the regular speed, but it is pronounced "тарелки" in the slow speed.
«тарелке» and «тарелки» are pronounced the same (or almost the same, but making a clear difference here would be considered non-standard pronunciation). Which is not to say that the slow pronunciation of this word sounds perfect. The unstressed И or Е should not be that clear.
Тарелках. You can enter a word here to see all the forms: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/morphque.cgi?flags=endnnnnp
- 12
Would you please elaborate on "(or almost the same, but making a clear difference here would be considered non-standard pronunciation)"? Благодарю вас.
At least, in the middle of the 20th century there was a disagreement amongst Soviet linguists whether these sounds are the same or different. You may make the unstressed Е slightly more open than unstressed И. It still sounds fairly natural. I feel that a word-final и is a bit more closed than a word final е.
One way or another, these sounds are very close and will not probably be clearly distinguished in normal speech (everyday conversation at normal speed, with a realistic amount of background noise).
- 12
Would you consider Enian's pronunciation of these two words on Forvo a clear representation of these sounds? https://forvo.com/word/%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BA%D0%B5/#ru https://forvo.com/word/%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BA%D0%B8/#ru Also would you please elucidate the italicised "may"? And lastly, is the difference between these two sounds clearer in some positions in the word than others? Благодарю вас.
Both sound good to me. I also uploaded my own pronunciations, so you may listen to them too.
Unstressed vowels that appear after the stressed syllable can be a little clearer in word-final position as opposed to somewhere in the middle. At least in some instances the vowel at the end of тарелки, люди and so on can be a more pronounced И than the vowel at the end of тарелке.
A professional voice talent may pronounce unstressed endings a bit differently if need be (e.g., to announce a station's name in a manner that leaves no doubt whether it is Летнее, Летние or Летняя)
Nevertheless, the realisations of the two unstressed vowels overlap a lot. I made about ten recordings for each word. They sounded the same over half of the time. Only a few times тарелки had a more closed и.
What would be the translation of "The bread is on a plate"? I have the correct answer with "The bread is on the plate", but i wonder if there is a difference.
"There is bread on the plate" would state existence of the bread on the plate, however the sentence states location of the bread.
- 1130
Google translate: На тарелке есть хлеб
That seems right, as far as I've learned.
Yes and no. That's a good way of breaking it down, but you would still use "на" to mean "at" if you're talking about a show, concert, work, stadium, etc. Sometimes you'd use в or на for one word just depending on meaning (if you were at the championship it would be Я был на чемпионате, but if you participated - Я принимал участие в чемпионате.) Another example - transportation. We ездим на автобусе, but if you just want to say you were in the bus (no verb of motion) it becomes в автобусе.
- 1130
Translating in/at/to/into from one language to another is probably one of the more irritating issues in the learning process, because each language has a huge variety of idiomatic ways of expressing these ideas, and they are not usually "user-friendly" - they're not obvious or logical, from the perspective of the native language of the student. It just takes lots of exposure and repetition and memorization.
- 721
Пусть носители языка скажут... но я никак не могу понять, почему "хлеб на тарелке", а не "хлеб в тарелке". Как-то слух режет...
<<В>> в таком случае, если это глубокая тарелка. А тарелка сама как поверхность - что-то лежит НА ней.
It does decline as тарелке in the dative and prepositional cases, but it is prepositional/locative in this sentence.
- 1130
Dative case designates that something is given or addressed to the person (object). which doesn't apply here. Also, the preposition на requires prepositional case when concerned with static location.
Can I use "There is the bread on the plate." instead of "The bread is on the plate."?
No, you can't translate it like that. If you wanted to say "There is bread on the plate", you would change the order of the words: "на тарелке хлеб"
while it may not exactly match in translation for the russian phrase given, edgar's structure sounds perfectly natural to me - american english. there's bread on the plate. there's food on the plate. there's an apple on the plate. these are not at all weird constructions for an american.
