"This is a cheese knife; this is a fish knife."
Translation:Это нож для сыра; это нож для рыбы.
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I can think of plenty of situations where one could say "this knife is for fish." There are usages where it could be used.
Having spoken English my entire life, it would be perfectly natural to say "this knife is for cheese." In fact, I once caught my wife using my fillet knife for cutting open some boxes!! I had to firmly say, "This knife is only for fish." I then gave her a box cutter and said, "This knife is for boxes." So yes, you are correct in saying "this knife is for..."
I wondered the same thing... Except for perhaps an adjective implies a 'cheesy knife" or "fishy knife" instead of a knife that is used for cheese or fish, which для brings out clearly. But thinking "in English" these seem OK to me.
But a google shows this form can be used, it seems: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Сырный_нож
"Сырный" and "рыбный" are merely the adjectives derived from the respective nouns. Рыбный нож receives a mention under the fish section of the Russian cutlery page on wikipedia (ctrl+f if you have trouble finding it) and сырный нож even gets its own article. IMO either translation should work for the English sentence. See discussion under Biglev's comment (in Russian) further down the page.
Yes. Here’s my ad hoc translation of the paragraph from the rules (available here or here):
§ 130. A semicolon is used before two independent clauses, joined together in a complex sentence without using the conjunctions, especially when such clauses are extended and have commas (about the comma between independent clauses, joined together in a complex sentence, see §§ 137 и 138), for example:
Ме́жду тем чай был вы́пит; давно́ запряжённые ко́ни продро́гли на снегу́; ме́сяц бледне́л на за́паде и гото́в уж был погрузи́ться в чёрные свои́ ту́чи, вися́щие на да́льних верши́нах, как клочки́ разо́дранного за́навеса. (Лермонтов) / Meanwhile the tea was all drunk; the horses, harnessed long ago, were chilled on the snow; the moon was hanging pale to the west and was ready to dive into its black clouds, suspended on the far peaks like the scraps of a torn curtain. (Lermontov)
Всё вокру́г засты́ло в кре́пком осе́ннем сне; сквозь серова́тую мглу чуть видны́ под горо́ю широ́кие луга́; они разре́заны Во́лгой, переки́нулись че́рез неё и расплы́лись, раста́яли в тума́нах. (М. Горький) / Everything around was frozen in the sound autumn’s sleep; the wide meadows were hardly visible under the hill through a greyish haze; they were cut by Volga, leaped through it and got blurred, melted in the mist. (M. Gorky)
This would sound extremely strange, as if Cheese and Fish are some people's nicknames and they own some knives.
Это is used to mean "This is a " ot "These are s" for all genders and for plurals.
«Это кошка» «Это хлеб» «Это масло» «Это лошади» all use это because they're all just stating what things are.
You use это/эта/этот/эти when you are saying something about a specific thing, not just stating what it is.
«Эта кошка ест» «Этот хлеб вкусный» «Это масло тает» «Эти лошади любят есть»
This makes perfect sense. It at least makes more sense, then not using the literal English translation. "This is a knife for cheese" - "Это" as well as "This knife is for cheese" - "Этот" should absolutely both be equally acceptable. Especially when "cheese knife" clearly isn't specifically one or the other.
Olimo has already written a nice text about it: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/11536858
Well, I'd say this particular sentence suits quite well for the other interpretation, too. You're comparing or juxtaposing two knives saying that one of them is meant for performing one function, the other for another.
(Although, in the way people actually speak, I've never noticed anyone making that difference. Most Russians I've met would use этот and это here quite equally. Might be regional differences or smth.)
As an originally native speaker (who admittedly has forgotten a lot of grammar with lack of recent practice), swapping это for этот in this sentence changes the meaning subtly. In the default version as above with это, you're just saying "this is a cheese knife, this is a fish knife" as a basic explanation. If you swap to этот, however, you'd be emphasising the difference, like if you had to explain a second time because someone misunderstood or did it wrong.
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Формально - да, но так никогда не говорят. "Сырный пирог" и "рыбный пирог" более уместно, но в основном все же "пирог с сыром" и "пирог с рыбой".
Why would we memorize this sentence.. probably useless. But are we memorizing sentences in this course? No, were learning vocabulary and how grammar changes these words as well as word placement. Here's what's useful: Do you eat fish or cheese. Do you ever start a sentence with "This is? Is this?" Do you usually eat with a fork, knife or spoon? Do you need practice with putting correct endings on words with different cases and genders? Do you know what prepositions take what case after them? Did you know the the word "for" in English has several different meanings and different words in Russian as well as different ways to express them? If you don’t use the sentence, why not use all the above to say something useful to you? I'll start.. Привет Анна, ЭТО Тим, мой парень. У нас много СЫРА хлеба и РЫВЫ НА обед. Ты хочешь есть? ЭТА тарелка ДЛЯ тебя! ДЛЯ меня? Спасибо ЗА обед!
"for" has several meanings in English that we don't even think about but these get separated into different words in Russian. для is used when "for" roughly means "to the benefit of". In other situations you will use на or за. It's difficult to explain exactly when to use those. If you can identify the difference between для and not для situations that will significantly help.
Agree! I didn't get a clue that I had to use "для" + GEN in this sentence, but well, that's the way it is! :D
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Wouldn't it be natural to use а between the parts to show the contrast? А doesn't have an exact translation in English and I think would often be translated by a semicolon.