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In theory, they're the same sound, but и softens the previous consonant and ы does not. According to a native speaker friend of mine. They sound totally different to me.
You would replace the genitive singular девочки with the genitive plural девочек: "У девочек есть брат?"
why "девочка" is not ending with "ы" as the rule says in this case "a/я=>ы"
It's the seven letter spelling rule. From the plurals lesson:
The 7-letter rule: Whenever you make any form of a word, and you need to write И or Ы, check this:
- after К, Г, Х and Ш, Ж, Щ, Ч always use И
But why can't duolingo write this on the informations in the genitive theme? There is just one example of an -a , -я ending word мама-мамы. So we could just think that every word's genitive (ending with -a) form are made with -ы. Девочка девочкы. Why do they not write one sentence about that we have to use the 7 letter rule here too?
Okay, this probably sounds really stupid to ask, but why is девочки used instead of девочка? Shouldn't девочка be feminine in its form already? What is it that turns девочка into девочки?
"у девушки есть брат" is what I heard but it was rejected. Aside from that, I'm a little unclear on when to use "девушки" and when to use "девочка" - they seem to be very similar sounding words that mean the same thing.
As an american living in ukraine this is still one of the hardest thigs for my ears to differentiate. Use the -вуш- form to refer to a young woman, e.g. your waitress. Use the -воч- form to refer to a little girl, e.g. a toddler or girl of elementary school age.
Is it just intonation that makes this a question? I would think this could also be a statement.
Yes, in Russian there is often no clear distinction between statements and questions. You must use context and intonation to tell which is which.
Meh...this is technically correct, but a bit on the poetic side of conversational English.
Девочка means a girl Девушка means femine If anyone is getting as confused as I am (and they sound the same too)
Yes so everyone confused with the whole у "something" есть, whatever has the object in that sentence is in gentive case, so for instance it's "у меня есть яблоко" not "у я есть", меня is in the genetive case because of possessions, it's quite easy to remember the format as the litteral meaning of this is "by me there is... " hope this helps!
