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- "Are you Ivan Ivanovich?"
"Are you Ivan Ivanovich?"
Translation:Вы Иван Иванович?
41 Comments
205
Вы and ты are both correct. They both mean "you". The situation is not discribed, so both are possible. Please fix this :) or add in which situation the conversation would be used in. Thanks in advance.
229
I believe that means "Is your name Ivan Ivanovich" while the sentence is "ARE YOU Ivan Ivanovich".
692
Shouldn't the first be used here? They're speaking about one person (ivan) so why do they use the plural form?
The plural form is also used as a formal singular, so "Vy" is like "Usted" (and "Ustedes", both) in Spanish. If this is a situation where two adults are meeting for the first time, it would sound disrespectful to use "ty."
However, as you can see above, there's a debate here on whether only "Vy" can be used in this translation, since there is not enough context to establish that this is two adults meeting for the first time. There are tons of situations in which a person would use the singular, informal "ty" and still be learning/checking their interlocutor's full name (e.g., a teacher to a pupil, looking at the class list on the first day, or two young students meeting each other, or acquaintances who have been in the same social circle long enough to talk to each other in 'ty' but never had to know each other's full name with patronymic until it came time for the speaker to purchase train/concert/movie tickets for everyone on her debit card, etc.)