31 Comments
I got this question wrong. It's a guess, but can 'мои' only be used for plurals, akin to 'mes' in French, could someone confirm this for me please?
полотенце is neuter so it has -а ending for plural.
Feminine and masucline can have -ы or -и. Some neuters have -я.
In other words, the last letter depends on if it's feminine, masculine or neuter, and what is the last letter before the ending.
I have read in some web pages that if a word is neuter that ends in "e", its plural should end in я. So why not полотенця instead of полотенца?
"Never write the letter "Я" after the letters 'Г, К, Х, Ж, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ц' instead use "А"" http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/spelling_rules.php
it would be like in english ending with kn or sp you need a vowel bettween for it too sound right, right? correct me i am probably wrong.
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Took me a while to figure out, but the accusative plural of inanimate direct objects uses the nominative plural. Nominative Neuter Singular "towel" is полотенце. According to the declension tables, the ending е should change to я BUT under the Russian Spelling Rules, я after Ц has to be changed to а, resulting in полотенца.
For my own purposes, I reorganized the table of spelling rules so that, rather than doing a look-up on what the results of the change are (which letters get changed to which), I could first see which Russian letters required a change, then look up the change. I find this more convenient. Here is my chart:
Ж Ш Щ....ы - и, о^ - е, я - а, ю - у
Ч Ц.......................о^ - е, я - а, ю - у
Г К............ы - и............. я - а, ю - у
Х..................................................ю - у
^Unstressed “o” only
I'm almost 100% sure I made the transpositions correctly, but if anyone sees an error, please let me know.
This is the most educational flag I've stumbled across since joining Duolingo.. Thank you all for such coherent, educated, and helpful contributions.
No not exactly. The first ends with a short "e" sound, the second with a short "a" sound. Hope that makes sense?
These are the first person singular possessive pronouns (my/mine) for the three genders:
- Мой is the masculine pronoun used with masculine nouns as in "мой нож" (my knife)
- Моя is the feminine pronoun used with feminine nouns as in "моя вилка" (my fork)
- Моё is the neuter pronoun used with neuter nouns as in "моё окно" (my window)
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So in the nominative case, 1st person possesive.. мой is the singular form and мои is the plural?
do they sound the same?
Мой is the singular form for masculine nouns, yes. And all genders use the same plural pronoun мои.
Мой and мои do not sound the same.
In English «мой» sounds like "moi" and «мои» (the plural) sounds more like "mah-ee" (two syllables). I'm no expert, but I think «й» is never sounded alone, only more modifies the sound of the vowel before it.
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й is the yot sound in all slavic languages. It sounds like y in toy or play
when a word ends with a "a", how would we know if it were singular or plural?
From the other words in the sentence. If it's plural then adjectives, possessive pronouns and so on are also in plural form.
In "мои полотенца" you know that "полотенца" is plural because "мои" is plural also.
If it were something like "моя фирма" then you'd know right away "фирма" is singular because "моя" is feminine singular.
If it were "белые полотенца" ("white towels") you would know that "полотенца" has to be plural form because "белые" is also plural form.
Looking for the word on the dictionary. Or looking at its possessive if it has one. Эта девушка (женский род). Эти девушки. Моё полотенце (средний род). Мои полотенца.
Because мой is masculine singular and you need neuter plural, which is мои.
