- Forum >
- Topic: Russian >
- "A blue cup and two plates, p…
"A blue cup and two plates, please."
Translation:Синюю чашку и две тарелки, пожалуйста.
17 Comments
This sentence is basically a request with the verb like «дайте» 'give' or «принесите» 'bring' dropped. Since you would use accusative for an object of these verbs, you use it in the short form of the phrase too.
Yes. It can be either nominative plural or accusative plural. However, «си́нюю ча́шку» is accusative, so we can assume «две таре́лки» is accusative, too.
Oh! Indeed. You’re right. «Две» is accusative, «таре́лки» is genitive. But genitive singular and accusative plural look identical here.
I'm far from an expert in this, so don't rely on the specifics, but I think the concept will help clarify things for you. Genitive sing is used with 2,3,4 and larger numbers ending in 2,3,4, e.g. 42, 54, 93. (I believe it is a linguistic remnant from a time when quantities/cases had three categories: one was singular, two was considered "dual", and everything else was plural. In Russian and a few other languages they kept the "dual" category and added three and four to it. So any number w/ 2-4 at the end is genitive singular (or you can think of it as dual) and 5-9, and 0 are genitive plural.
Синяя чашка и две тарелки, пожалуйста. Is that wrong because the дайте is implied?
Ok is it just obvious to everyone on here except me, that “blue cup” should magically become accusative even though there’s no verb before it??
I think it is accusative because this sentence is an abbreviation of "Give me.....please".
I guess putting it in accusative makes it obvious to the person listening, that it’s a request and not just an acknowledgment that the blue cup exists?
