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- "Чего там нет?"
113 Comments
1994
Could someone point out the 'main' difference(s) between 'Chego' and 'Chto'? A URL reference would be fine.
Thanks for putting this course together!
The only difference is in the case. «Что» is the nominative (or accusative) form, «чего» is the genitive. See the declension chart on Wiktionary.
You know how in German you ask wer/wen/wem depending on the function of the part you want to learn more about? For example:
Wer bist du? — Ich bin Student. — Nominative
Wen hast du gesehen? — Ich habe einen Freund gesehen. — Akkusative
Or, better yet, how in English you can ask who, but also whom? (Who is there? To whom should I send that?) Well, that's the same thing! In Russian, the question words кто and что are subject to case changes.
The answer to this question would have to use the Genitive case because of the negation: «Там нет книги». Now we replace the bit that we don't know with the question word что, adjust it for the case — чего — and put it to the front, arriving at «Чего там нет?»
I hope that clears the confusion and, for reference, here's the declension pattern of кто/что (thanks Wiktionary):
Thank you very much. I was confused because I didn't know that нет forces genitive. In none of the other languages I've learned until now there was such thing.
178
From what I can gather on the interwebs, use of the genetive in negation is unique to the Slavic languages, though a few of them (Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian) have evolved to use only the accusative in negation and now consider use of the genetive in this situation to be old-fashioned or archaic.
It is what it is for historical reasons, and I'm pretty sure it's not the best option if you're a learner. For one thing, Accusative should really be between Nominative and Genitive.
I'm a native speaker so I neither really care about this nor can advise what is the best for learning, but your concern is valid. The default case order in German is also NGDA, but if you use NADG, the tables suddenly become much easier to memorise.
924
Not sure why the order would be different, maybe the textbook author had a "better" idea about the ordering. AFAIK all (native) grammars of Slavic, German, Latin, Greek ... languages use NGDA order, with some variation only at vocative, prepositional, instrumental, ablative, locative etc
Okay. I have a couple different books, and so I double checked, and sure enough, they have them in different orders than what you show. I find that confusing, as I am a visual learner and would like just one chart that was consistant. Guess I will just have to pick one. Is there any particular reason for the Russian default order? Maybe I should just use that one, since there must be a reason for putting it in that order.
I apologise, I thought you were the person who asked the question.
I didn't realise the word order was different from the one in the original sentence, but the wrong case stuck out like a broken rib. I guess my perception of the language might be a bit different due to being a native speaker...
Okay, so «чего нет там?» is of course valid, but puts heavy emphasis on the last word: “what's missing there that you can find elsewhere?”. Duo's version is more neutral.
It's strange... I opened this discussion to see if anyone had commented on the spelling of чего -- I had put a в -- and instead saw all the comments on cases. I'm great at grammar as long as it was the mechanics of English or a Romance language, but for Russian I hardly understand the explanations. Luckily I can still breeze through the course (so far) because I am familiar with the spoken language. I am learning Russian like a child...
Is anybody else closing their heads to the grammatical notes?
Same here and same with all languages I'm learning, I don't understand anything of this genetive, nominative or whatever... I just make mistakes sometimes and over practice and time I start developing an intuition to the language instead of memorizing irregulars and complicated grammatical terms and rules which I'll most likely forget in the near future, I find this way much more productive for the long term. Besides, I think it's much more fun trying to guess patterns and form sentences on your own rather than memorizing templates like a robot, plus it's really rewarding to see that you quickly pick the right choice again and again out of pure intuition, I must also note that I find this attitude to language learning the most natural.
I have been studying Russian for years thinking that I must properly learn all grammar to be understood. This approach has made me afraid of mistakes so I don't speak, but I know many Russian children that speak the languge all the time and can't explain anything about grammar. This is what I like about duo lingo, you can dig deeper into grammar or just go with intuition. Everyone learns differently but I have made more progress going with intuition on duo lingo, than studying grammar books for years. For me studying grammar books was a waste of time.I can't explain much about English grammar either and I don't care, I just speak it, and read it. ( Can't write or spell though, it is just how my mind works.)
This comment and thread are so refreshing to read. With most things that I learn, I prefer to gain an understanding of the underlying rules & structures, and the reasons things are the way they are. But with language, learning seems to work differently for me. Despite having a reasonably solid grasp of my native language (English), I have NEVER been able to learn any of the underlying rules for it. I don't think I could draw a line from the names of any of the English (cases?) to a list of corresponding examples in a matchup exercise even if my life depended on it. I can tell you that "present perfect", "participle", and "gerund" are words that might be on one side of that matchup list. And I probably can even correctly employ each of those things, just without being able to name them. And this is why I don't let myself get discouraged when my eyes glaze over every. single. time. somebody asks "which case is that word in?" or somebody explains that negative requires genitive case. I think I know that that's a rule in Russian, but I have no idea what it actually means, even though I've read explanations of them dozens of times But I keep all the young Russian kids in mind. Most of them probably can't define or illustrate the cases either (at least yet), and they're learning the language just fine. So, I continue forward, often thinking to myself "perhaps the cases will start to click for me in the next learning module." So far, no. But I'm still learning the language! Anyway, it's just nice to hear from others who are learning it the same way.
Same here. I like the discussion. I don't understand half of it -well I would if I wanted but I don't feel lile it's helping me much because when I try to say Something I most likely won't think about what case which part of tge sentence is in. But it is helping me to understand my mistakes. (I didn't even see that чего is a different form of что)
1667
The problem is that the English would have нет negating там: "not there", but the way the sentence is structured in Russian, it literally means "Not what (is) there?", and нет negates что, which is cast in genitive чего.
None of this is obvious from word order, which logically should be «Там нет чего» or «Нет чего там.». I don't know whether that word order wold be correct or not, especially given that Duo orders the sentence as «Чего там нет».
When you use нет (не было, не будет), whatever lacks is in genitive (and «у меня» has nothing to do with it).
There are different situations when you express the lack of something, and sometimes the usage of genitive would be a mistake: «Они не продают книг/книги» ("they don't sell books"), but «Они не всегда продают книги» ("they don't always sell books").
So if I got it right: In one case, it is linked to the noun, in the other to всегда. And всегда doesn't change because it is not a noun, right? But overal, if there is не/нет (a negation), you always need to use the genitive case for the noun next to it?
EDIT: You can either книг and книги because in one case the не is linked to the verb "I don't sell" and in the other it is linked to the fact that "I sell no books", right?
1914
I swear that the voice sounds like чево, no matter that the correct word is чегою
Yes, that is correct. чего is pronounced [чево] because of historical reasons. Just like кого is pronounced ково, and the same goes with every adjective inclined for the genitive case and for neuter and masculine nouns.
Чего [чево] там нет? – Там нет моего любимого мороженного (pronounced [моево любимово мороженново]).
It’s a historical spelling, just like in French or in English.
I really don‘t know, since I have not been exposed much to Russian dialects and I am not a native speaker. After seaching a while on the Internet, posted in a forum. According to the user called Basil77, who lives in Moscow, ‘99,9% of native speakers pronounce "в" here.’ Therefor, no, I don‘t think there are any Russian dialects that pronounce the genitive ending -ого/-его with a [g].
Here‘s his full post: ‘I'd say it's a good question. 99,9% of native speakers pronounce "в" here. The kids who are learning to write always ask the opposite question: “Why I should write "г" here if I pronounce "в" ?”’
P.S. I don‘t really think you should call that sound the ‘English g’ since the letter G can be pronounced several ways in English: either like the actual [g] sound, like in ‘god’ or ‘bag’, like [ŋ] in the diagraph ng (e.g. ‘bang’) or like the voiced palato-alveolar fricative [ʒ] like in ‘bridge’ or [dodge]. One extreme example of this is the gerund ‘garaging’ pronounced [ˈɡæɹɑːʒiŋ].
This is the opinion of a non-native speaker so take it with a grain of salt, but I would use «Этого не хватает.» to say something is missing (so in this context, «Чего там не хватает?».) In my mind, when you say something is missing you're implying that things would be better if it was there, hence не хватать. Here, you're just asking about the absence of something.
Please read the comment Norrius made under the highest voted question. There's more info there, I'll just copy one part here:
"The answer to this question would have to use the Genitive case because of the negation: «Там нет книги». Now we replace the bit that we don't know with the question word что, adjust it for the case — чего — and put it to the front, arriving at «Чего там нет?»"
Nominative is the subject of the sentence, accusative is the object. He opens the window. Subject = he, opens verb, object = window. He gives me the box. He= subject, gives = transitive verb, me= indirect object (dative), box = direct object (accusative).. The box is on the table, box = subject (nominative), table = object of a preposition (on) prepositional. The boy's (possessive = genitive) box (subject) sits on the the table.
https://gyazo.com/012af45be09a30d9ee08544460872c35 может кто помощь?прошу модераторов испавить ошибку
44
Any tips on remembering and differentiating the 300 conjugations of who and whose? I seriously can never tell them apart.