"The horse is eating an apple."
Translation:Лошадь ест яблоко.
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Asked my native Russian colleague. Putting эта in front of it, changes the meaning to 'this one specific horse is eating', instead of just any random horse.
This is an artefact of the decision by the creators of the Russian→English course to translate "the" as "этот/это/эта" in order to acquaint Russian speakers with the utility of English definitive articles. Some of the exercises from that course "leaked" into the reverse (i.e. this) course. Hence the unnecessary "эта".
So you are correct: "эта"="this/that" while "the" should be typically dropped in translation: it should be obvious which horse is eating that apple form the context.
Why is эта accepted in the begging? Isn't "the horse" different from "this horse"?
Russian doesn't have definite and indefinite articles like English, so there's no grammatical difference between "the horse" and "a horse." By saying лошадь you could be saying either one, but by saying ета лошадь you are explicitly referring to a specific horse. "The" horse.
Same question. It does accept the sentence without эта, but it seems to me that the suggested Russian translation is not correct for the given English sentence. Is there an explanation or should I report it if I see it again? Спасибо.
Sometimes it accepts typos, ie. typing е in stead of э, but forgetting the "ь" marks the sentence wrong. I don't mind or anything, but I don’t really get what the ь even does. Spelling is hard. I keep writing "тш" in stead of "ч" as well, never going to get the difference between ч ш щ and ж, haha.
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Ь indicates palatalization of the previous consonant, and is used in case a softening vowel cannot follow the aforementioned consonant. (If it's followed by another consonant or nothing.)
This is perfectly explained here: http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/spelling.html
Edit: Oh, and, by the way, "есть" is the infinitive of eat, and has a similar effect to putting "to" in front of a verb in English.
The above is explained some way down this page: http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/verb.html
This website is the business for concise, accurate explanations of Russian grammar: http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/index.html
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ч = ch, ш = sh
ж is like ш, but with added voice.
щ sounds like sh, ahem, in the beginning of the word here at 2:21 mark
ь ("soft sign") usually indicates that the preceding consonant is soft. It's difficult to describe the difference between hard and soft consonants, you should search for videos explaining it, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roevsN1zBl4. The difference between the Russian word нет and english "net" is pretty much that the sound 'n' in the Russian word is soft.
Щ is pronounced like you're shushing someone softly. It's above the place in your mouth where ш is pronounced.
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'ч = ch, ш = sh" Yes, but not always: chto is pronounced shto. I asked native speakers just to be sure -- and they confirmed it.
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It will often accept typos, as long as the word typed isn't a different word. If I type buys but mean boys, it'll most likely be marked wrong; if I enter bopys, it'll probably just give me a typo message.
I assume it's the same in Russian, but my vocabulary isn't yet big enough to know valid words that are spelled similarly.
I was relieved that конь was accepted in addition to лошадь. Is there any different between the two?
Not quite. Do not mix the indefinite/infinitive forms and the present tense of verbs.
The indefinite/infinitive form:
to eat = есть; to be = быть
Present tense, 3d person:
eats = ест; is = есть.
As for "to have", Russian has a somewhat unconventional way of expressing this idea: "I have X" = "у меня есть X", which literally translated into something like "X is by me". So still, "есть"="is" here.
В качестве законченного предложения, это звучит странно - не то время. Present Simple "eats" используется для описания обычных или повторяющихся действий. Поэтому нормально звучали бы "the horse eats apples" (лошадь ест яблоки) или "Every day the horse eats an apple" (каждый день лошадь съедает по яблоку). Ваш же вариант "the horse eats an apple" означает "обычно/регулярно лошадь ест яблоко. Согласитесь, это звучит странно.
What is the difference between "есть" and "ест" i know the soft sign is there,but is there any real difference at all?
Do you mean grammatical difference of difference in pronunciation?
In any case, ест is a present tense, 3d person, singular form of the verb есть (to eat).
I.e. ест = eats while есть = to eat.
However, есть can also be a present tense form of the verb быть (to be).
As for pronunciation, you have to train your ear: to native speakers "есть" and "ест" sound differently. Try forvo.com to hear how natives pronounce these words.
Well, yes they are different words, but I'll assume you are referring to pronunciation. Yes, they are pronounced differently. The difference is very subtle and hard to hear if you're not a native speaker (which I am not), or not used to listening for it. The difference is in palatalization of the letter т.
I have seen a lot of people asking about this kind of thing so I just wrote a post you can check out here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/27291227
Hope it helps!
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I see that "apple" remains "yabloko" here and doesn't change
But as far as I know there is an accusative case in Russian (my previous comment should have been 'what happened with the accusative case here?')
I haven't googled much about it, and I guess there must be a lesson for it (I haven't checked), so don't bother explaining it to me for the moment, later I'll know :) (unless you want to)
«Яблоко» is indeed in the accusative here. It doesn't change because the accusative is identical to the nominative for inanimate nouns of the second declension.
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лошадь is a feminine noun and therefore needs the feminine form of "this", ie эта. это can be used for masculine nouns and in instances where no noun is specified (I believe).
Edit: это and эта are the cursive forms of "это" and "эта", respectively.
The nominative forms look like this:
этот — masculine
это — neuter
эта — feminine
эти — plural (all genders)
(you can find the full chart on Wiktionary)
«Это» also doubles as “this” in the sense of “this is ...”, in which case it doesn't decline for gender.
Also, all those words start with the letter Э.
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They're completely different verbs. "Есть" means "there is" (and by extension can denote possession when used with the preposition "у"), while "ест" means "eats".
Is there a clear pronunciation difference between есть and ест? They often sound alike to me.
- Есть — to eat, ест — he/she eats (or is eating)
- Есть also can mean posession (e.g. у меня есть яблоко — I have an apple)
No, that's just the speech synthesis sounding kind of odd. It's "Lóshad" with an "L" sound at the beginning, a stressed "o" vowel, an unstressed "a" vowel and a palatalized "d" sound at the end (denoted by the soft sign ь).
After all this time I was suddenly confused between лошадь and площадь in this particular question. I'd not noticed the similarity before!
This is so confusing. In a previous lesson the answer was: лошадь ест яблоко. Now it's telling me эта... I wish duolingo could make up its mind.
This exercise must have migrated from the English course for Russian speakers. Since Russian does not have articles, and they don't come naturally to Russian speakers, the creators of that course have made a decision to mark English "the" with Russian "этот/это/эта/эти". This is clearly not ideal, but I can see the rationale for this, which is explained (in Russian) here.
In any case, both translations (with and without "эта") are accepted here, so I am not sure what exactly you are objecting to.
