72 Comments
Wait, I'm confused. Isn't it plural nominative? (which is why they give the translation "Give me some onions, please" Onions being plural)
"Лук" means both "onion" and "onions". It is a kind of an uncountable noun in Russian. Like, say, "bread" in English.
Not exactly, genitive case makes it partitive, "some onions" or maybe even "some onion"
Ok, thats great... So how would you say "Give me AN ONION" in russian then?
All those years trying to figure out whether to use the genitive or the partitive in Finnish, then I have to get used to the fact that the genitive is the partitive in Russian...
I would say "Дай(те) мне (одну) луковицу"
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https://www.duolingo.com/Ward.Joshua Ward.Joshua
At least you know what they are
So is there any occasion where you would use the plural nominative for onion (луки, is it?)
It's not a thing. Луки is the plural if лук when you mean bow (like bows and arrows), not onion.
Btw, if you need "countable onions" you can use the words "луковица" or "головка лука".
Мне нужна одна луковица/одна головка лука.
Мне нужно пять луковиц/пять головок лука.
RomanRussian . . . your comments are SO helpful!!! Thank you so much for your huge contribution.
As I know already, onion is singular even it can be some onions. Nevertheless why "give me an onion" is rated wrong. In my opion this is also a valid translation, or is there a special Russian expression to say that I want to have ONE onion?
Further, if you click лука it says "onion," but if you type onion, it's marked wrong. :/
Alright, so... The noun in nominative is лук, it is a normal masculine noun. It can mean both "an onion" or "onions" as a collective noun. In here, the clue is that the word is лука. Since it's an inanimate object (not a person or animal), the tip-off is that it it's in genitive case. Since it's a collective noun (like bread or tea), and it's in genitive case, that means it HAS to be "some". Dajte mne luk, without a genitive ending, would be more ambiguous in my opinion.
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I hope that, by now, you've learned that you cannot rely on the hover hints.
I've given up on trying to wrap my head around these cases at this point. I just plan of practising so much that I'll start to feel when it's right and not.
One thing duo is extremely bad at is teaching these cases and the differences between all the different versions of each word. You're not alone.
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When you say "bad", I wonder why you're being so kind. Duo is absolutely wretchedly terrible at teaching cases. And so many exceptions being taught first, before the rule is given good examples, with so many weird usages put forward without any explanation. But it's free. And Rosetta Stone is worse.
When is it alright to leave out the indirect object (мне)? Could this sentence also be translated as "give us/him/them onions"?
With no context it implies "мне" by default. But let's put this phrase in some context:
- Что я должен дать вашему другу? - What should I give to your friend?
- Дайте лука, пожалуйста. - Give (him) some onions, please.
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In English, "pass the [food]" is very limited in context. It most often applies when people are seated at a dining table, and you ask someone to give you a dish of food located too far away from you for you to obtain it yourself. It could also apply to some few other situations, but basically involves the same idea: you can't reach it, the person you ask can reach it, so you ask that person to "pass" it to you - to pick it up and give it to you by hand.
Asking someone to give you the/some onions doesn't involve any particular context of ready access by the person asked. The food may be located else where, and the person will have to travel some distance to obtain it. Asking someone to "pass" you a food item when it is not near that person does not make any sense in English, but asking them to give the item to you does make sense, even if they have to go somewhere to obtain the item.
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Ударение на лукА по прежнему звучит. Это не правильно. Должно быть лУка. Послал Report a problem
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Why is "give me the onion please" marked as wrong? Even if I tap on лука it says onion, but the answer needs to be onions
Alright, so... The noun in nominative is лук, it is a normal masculine noun. It can mean both "an onion" or "onions" as a collective noun. In here, the clue is that the word is лука. Since it's an inanimate object (not a person or animal), the tip-off is that it it's in genitive case. Since it's a collective noun (like bread or tea), and it's in genitive case, that means it HAS to be "some". Dajte mne luk, without a genitive ending, would be more ambiguous in my opinion.
It doesn't seem to accept, "Give me some onion, please." It absolutely should.
It is a homonym in Russian. Лук means both an onion/onions and a bow.
But "Give me a bow, please" would be "Дайте мне лук, пожалуйста" (also it can be translated as "give me onions, please" though O.o )
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On the topic of strange homonyms, there's a third English meaning of "bow" and it is what you do on stage to acknowledge adulation, and that was my visualization of "give me a bow, please". Actually, though, that's a homograph, because it is spelled the same, but pronounced differently.
In Serbian luk (short u, as in look) means onion/s, and luk (long u, as in Luke) means bow. I am not sure if it's same in Russian.
Is "Дайте" a word that changes endings depending on pronoun? So would "Give her some onions" be different than "Give me some onions"? Give is a verb, so I would assume, but I've not had the any other circumstance other than "give me" yet here on duo.
It's a collective noun (so it means "many" even if singular) and it's in genitive (partitive).
I'm confused :( I thought лук in this sentence would be in the accusitive because the verb to give is acted on the onion. I gather from other comments that onion and onions may be an exception
Can't we use Give 'Us',in spite of Give 'Me'.I just chose Give me but i want to know the reason
Is this the standard way of asking for something in Russian? In English this would come off as kind of blunt (unless it was mom saying it to you or something).
Note, that in Russian sentence the polite form "вы" instead of familiar "ты" is used, wich makes it sound more respectful. It's a tool English doesn't have so English have to add something else to make it sound less blunt.
What case is лука here? I thought that after дайте (мне) would be accusative, but that does not appear to be accusative as far as I know.
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Here is the genitive case (лука). It depends on the implied question (if it is an uncountable object):
1) Give me what I see. What I see? I see onion. Here is the accusative case. Дайте мне лук (молоко, воду, еду, хлеб, мясо, бензин, песок).
2) Give me something that I do not have. What I do not have? I do not have onion. Here is the genitive case. Дайте мне лука (молока, воды, еды, хлеба, мяса, бензина, песка).
Both options are correct.
It doesn't have much to do with absence of something, it's just partitive genitive (when you have "some" of something). Agreed with the accusative case though.
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Unfortunately, I don't see your native language in your profile. I don't understand what is the "Partitive genetiv" in Russian. In my opinion it is something from German.
Посмотрел "Партитив" на википедии. Кажется понял, что это такое. Тогда было бы не "лука", а "луку".
То есть может быть на самом деле не два, а три варианта:
1) "дайте лук" (дательный падеж)
2) "дайте лука" (обычный родительный падеж)
3) "дайте луку" (второй родительный или партитив)
http://russianmentor.net/gram/mailbag/topics/gen2.htm
The partitive ending isn't always specifically used (that site claims it's because of "lazy youth", but really it does seem like it's a way of just streamlining and simplifying the language).
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Thanks for the link.
I agree. Лука and луку are the almost same. They are two options of Genetive.
Is it correct, that it is important for the partitive genetive that it must implied the some certain amount of an object or objects, for example of onions?
Я пытался найти интуитивное понимание различий между " Дайте лук" и "Дайте лука". Как носитель русского языка. Но в любом из вариантов подразумевается или некоторое количество лука или весь лук. Даже если сказать "дайте лук", то не обязательно весь лук. И даже если сказать "дайте лука", то не обязательно, что только какую-то часть. Может и весь.
Поэтому, как носителю языка, мне достаточно знать только отличия вопросов, на которые отвечают существительные в этих двух разных падежах (хотя вопрос "кого?" в них один и тот же). Я вижу четкую разницу между "дайте лук" и "дайте лука" только если поставлю падежные вопросы полностью:
вопрос родительного падежа = Кого (чего) нет?
вопрос винительного падежа = Кого (что) вижу?
Именно так нам объясняли разницу между этими двумя падежами, когда я учился в школе.
Поэтому я сразу и предложил своё интуитивно понятное мне отличие. Если у меня нет лука, то дайте мне лука. А если я вижу лук, то дайте мне лук. И не важно, часть лука или весь лук. И для этого понимания мне не нужно было знать о "разделительном родительном".
Я понимаю, что "разделительный родительный" можно применить только если объект делимый, особенно если он выражается русским существительным единственного числа. А любой множественный объект, выраженным множественным числом существительного, заведомо делимый. Поэтому нельзя сказать "дайте мне атома" (можно только "дайте мне атом"). Но можно сказать или "дайте мне атомы" или "дайте мне атомов". И не важно, все атомы или какую-то их часть.
Итог: делимость объекта лишь разрешает применить "разделительный родительный", но не позволяет выбрать между ним и винительным. Оба варианта (дайте лук и дайте лука) означают одно и то же. Разница только в подразумеваемом вопросе падежа. О чём я и написал сразу же.
Exuse me for the Russian part of my answer. I hope you will can translate and understand it.
I'm just trying to explain that semantically, there is zero sense of negation or implied absence of something in the sentence. The use of genitive here is specifically because of the rule dealing with partitive nouns.
It doesn't imply an explicit amount of onions, just... "some" onions.
So if the word for onion sounds like "leek," (to me, anyway,) what is a leek in Russian? Do they count leeks and onions as being the same?
I put 'pass the onions please' and it was marked wrong. Do you think it should be marked right? If not, why?
That would be shrek except him screaming and without the "please" part in the sentence.
