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- Topic: Russian >
- "Я читаю сам."
43 Comments
This is "Я читаю один" (if the speaker is male) or "Я читаю одна" (if the speaker is female).
So, is сам something like the opposite of causative form? For example, is "я (paint) мой дом сам" the opposite of "I am having my house painted", in respect with who is actually doing the painting?
It'd be "Я читаю один" or even better "Я читаю в одиночестве". "Сам" always means "by oneself".
So whoever the subject is, to say that by myself, yourself, himself, etc we will always use сам?
Yes, they agree on the subject. Сам, самА, самО, сАми. They conjugate like regular (pro)nouns, too, just with reflexive meaning.
Thanks for the reply. I'd though so but when I wrote it, it got rejected. So I was just wondering if I maybe got it wrong. But I guess not. Maybe I just made a typo or maybe it needs reporting.
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I know the meaning is supposed to be "I read by myself" but I forgot to type "by" and ended up submitting "I read myself" and surprised that it is considered correct.
Is "I read myself" correct in English to imply the same meaning with "I read by myself"?
"I read myself" is perfectly fine, as long as you emphasise "myself", and as long as there's no confusion that the "myself" is an object, which in this case, it can't be, you can't literally read your self.
"I read, myself" would be correct, and duolingo always ignores all punctuation. Andreas is describing the spoken equivalent of a comma. (Written, it's not correct without the comma.)
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"I read myself" does not, in English, equate with "I read by myself". You would use this construction to indicate that you read, too (eg. in response to someone saying that they read a lot of thrillers, you might say "I read a lot myself but I prefer romances.").
The translation is not used in English language. People would look at you puzzled.
A child who learns how to read can say that. Or somebody who is very farsighted and just got glasses ;o)
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Because that would require commas to be correct and Duo ignores punctuation thereby rendering the word order incorrect. It's a struggle, I concur.
Because it is not a correct sentence in English. You have to say "I read by myself"
I answered "I read alone" and a message displayed to explain the nuance. It was very clear and useful ! Thank you very much Duolingo :D
I also used this answer and it was counted wrong, but I didn't get the accompanying explanation. I reported it as the two sentences mean the same thing, even if there's a different way to express the latter.
Interesting. Sam in serbocroatian means both "alone" or "by oneself". Is there an expert in slavic etimology here? I'd like to know more!
Little advise,, read a few books about verbs and other grammatical to support much faster for your study.. I'd recomend The sivler book of russia
the suggested translations were both 'by myself' and 'on my own'. And in English that has two different meanings
"I read by myself" means "I read and no one else is around"
"I read on my own" can either mean that or the meaning I've associated more commonly with that: "I read and no one else is helping me"
which version is 'я читаю сам'?
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In the English translation, "myself" is treated as an adverb in this context (ie, it describes how you read, not what you read). It's not that you are reading your own person, but you personally are reading on your own.
I wrote: "I am reading to myself." This was marked as incorrect. Comments?
Comments are above. Someone has asked exactly the same question as you, and got answered by a native.
I'm a bit confused about "cam". I used "alone" instead of "by myself" and it was marked incorrect. Does "cam" mean "without help" or something like that then?
Does "read by myself" here means "reading without any assistance" or "reading alone"?
I looked up "сам" on wiktionary but got no result. There's a page for "себя́" with a big declension table, but no mention of "сам"... Why is that?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%B1%D1%8F#Declension
