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- "Это женщины."
51 Comments
Hey, I know the answer to this one! "This is a woman" isn't correct because женщины is plural. Women vs woman. Singular woman is женщина I think.
Yep, you're right. I deleted my original question before you replied because I worked it out but thank you anyway!
Yes. Женщина means woman. "Women" means Женщины. If they're trying to say, "These are women.", then the declension of этот is wrong. It should be Эти женщины.
Woman is when there are one person and Women is when there are lot's of them so they are plural.
Why do we use это in this case? Isn't это masculine as well as singular? The sentence is talking about women (plural and feminine). So why not эта or эти?
"Это..." is a structure meaning "This is/These are...", while "эта" is a feminine demonstrative pronoun for "this". So "Это женщины" - "These are women" and "Эти женщины" - "These women".
Why in the full sentence "Это женщины" does the word женщины sound like it's pronounced with an и sound added in almost like "женищины" but when played on its own it's pronounced phonetically?
ы is a vowel that doesn't exist in English. ы in English would kind of sound like "Ayee" as one continuous vowel. When speaking Russian at a nominal speed, ы and и are difficult to distinguish, and will rely on your personal knowledge of regular and gender based conjugation to differentiate them in your head.
You mean when the audio says "zhe-NI-shi-ny"? Yeah, I think it's a technical error
From what I read I think this is an issue regarding palatalization and non-palatalization (I assume "нщи" is a soft, palatalized cluster, and that modifies its pronunciation). But since I didn't understand the lesson on this very well I'm afraid I can't help you any further...
The н in «нч» and «нщ» is indeed always palatalized. The pronunciation in this particular sentence, though, is a bit glitchy. The voice wobbles in "женщ", and it should not.
Ш is pronounced with your togue comparatively low, spooned down. Щ is longer and hissier, and you pronounce it with your tongue very high up.
thankyou. This is the first good explanation i've had about this in over a year. Many people try to say that щ is s+ch like "fresh cheese". Compared with your excellent explanation, this is just plain wrong.
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As a general rule plurals(when there is more than one) in English don't get articles like a/an/the. One exception as far as I am aware is if it is part of a name - The Pixies, The Rolling Stones, The Avengers. Another exception is when you are pointing out a specific group e.g. Yes officer, these are the women who did it, but now you have classified them as a singular group(as one) as opposed to a group of women(as many individuals).
Whenever I click on женщины it says "Woman's (принадлежность)"? Is принадлежность another word for women?
You probably don't care a year later, but still, in case anyone else is wondering about it: no, it means "possession", and it's here to explain to the reader that "woman's" is the possessive form in this case as opposed to being the contraction of "woman is".
I got marked wrong for "They are women". Is there actually a difference in translation, or was it just missed?
I did the Right answer (which i think is wrong, it should be this is a woman) and it still doesn't week
In the audio recording, it sounds like there's an extra vowel between the first two syllables of женщины
I understand that женщины is women, but why does это mean "these are" rather than it is? I said it is, and it was still counted correct, but it just sounds odd that это can mean both "this is" and "these are". o.0
Can't это женщина be translated to as "these women"? If not, then how do i translate it to as such?
I really can't hear the difference between женщина and женщины. Both sound kinda like 'женщ-uh-н-eh' (sorry for the weird phonetic writing), at least when said fluently in a sentence. It has to do with the unstressed vowels becoming reduced somehow, I guess...
I have big trouble with the sound of ы. The duolingo voice sounds more like the french é like the russian е but drier but i talk with this moldavian chick at work who tells me another sound thats more inbetween у and и. I just don't understand that ы sound
