70 Comments
so is масло butter, oil, or grease? These are quite different substances, you wouldn't want to smear oil on your bread or put butter in your engine.
Масло (butter) and повидло (as in 'apple butter') are also very different substances, but English calls them with the same word. When I want to fry something, I could put either butter or vegetable oil on the frying-pan, but not apple butter! Does that make English less logical than Russian? Hardly. Russian and English just name substances according to the different criteria.
For 'butter' in English, the distinguishing feature is that you can spread it on your bread. For «масло» in Russian, the distinguishing feature is that you can use it for frying. Each language has its own set of concepts chosen according to different criteria. That's why learning foreign languages broadens your outlook: it helps to see that the world can be described differently, with other distinguishing features being important.
If you need to distinguish the words that are unified under the same concept, you could add qualifying adjectives, both in Russian and English:
- fruit butter 'пови́дло',
- milk buter 'ма́сло',
- сли́вочное ма́сло 'butter',
- расти́тельное ма́сло 'oil'.
As for grease, the English word 'oil' also has a food meaning (vegetable oil; Russian масло) and a technical meaning (oil which Russia and Saudi Arabia sell; Russian нефть), and having them combined in the same word never hurt anyone. The context in which they are used are just so different that it's practically impossible to put butter (масло) in your engine, or to put нефть (oil) in your salad.
we have also mashine oil-машинное масло that add it in cars and sewing machine and to lubricate a bicycle for example and we have corn oil, olive oil, chocolate butter, it's not peanut oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter and i.e ))
liquid oil--(жидкое) масло
hard butter--(твёрдое) масло
We use "масло" as any oil or any butter and we understand it within the meaning of or we use adjective
fruit butter-- повидло it's like jam but it's not butter in Russia
sorry for my English
Thank you for the review))
Got it - so oil created from carbon fuels etc., is нефть, cooking oil/butter is масло, unless specified as расти́тельное ма́сло. As you say, English does the same thing with vegetable oil vs. engine oil, and so on.
Thanks szeraja_zhaba.
It's not really butter, it's just called that because it has a similar consistency to butter.
It's delicious! It's like concentrated applesauce with spices and sugar, but no butter. I think they call it apple butter because you spread it on toast like butter, similar to peanut butter.
Thanks for the clear explanation. But now the West are able to put cooking oil into a converter and turn it into engine fuel for running a car... More confusion in store in the very near future...
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Great point! And this was the very reason I started to learn Russian, France and German.
Chinese here. While we are on it, масло, milk butter is literally translated as 奶(milk)油(oil)/牛(cow)油(oil),or 黄(yellow)油(oil), in Chinese. As you can see, two of it are similarly distinguished as Russian, one of it is distinguished by colour:)
You have to figure out the context. I've heard my father in law and others call automotive oil масло as well. Along those lines, in English we use the word hot to mean the weather is hot, food is hot temperature wise and food is hot (spicy), but in Russian they have different words/phrases for each of those.
Russian nouns have several case-forms.
When the noun is the subject of the sentence, «ма́сло» is used. It’s called nominative case.
When you speak about absence of something, you use a construction «нет» + Genitive case. Genitive case of «ма́сло» is «ма́сла».
Still for this word, it seems they are pronounced the same way be it "маслo" or "масла " ! How confusing ^^ !
I am not a native Russian speaker but as far as I can tell the pronunciation is identical. This is because stress is on the first syllable of the word and the short pronunciation of "o" and "a" are the same.
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So when it's positive, the noun is in the nominative case, and when it's negative it's genitive?
what's with all the poverty in these last few lessons? nobody has water or milk, not even the cat, there is nothing on the table. I surely didn't see that in the other courses I took :(
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There is wrong accent on the second syllable in pronunciation here. Correctly is "мáсла". Not "маслá"!
Butter is uncountable. It's a substance, you don't normally say 'one butter': instead, you say something like 'one stick of butter' or '100 grams of butter'. Therefore it's not used with article 'a', because 'a' is used only before countable nouns.
I said, "We don't have the butter." I think both should be right. Like imagine you and your friends are being accused of stealing a particular stick of butter.
I had never heard of Apple Butter until now. I had to search for it on the internet. So, basically there is no "butter" in apple butter. It is like apple purée. Right ?
That's not a bad translation, but that means that you had butter at one point and now you have none. This statement is more neutral.
Ha, the words to pick included "we haven't any butter". Used it just for a change of pace and it was wrong... feel like I was tricked!
Why do they only put у from the verb (у есть) if in other lessons we used the whole thing?
«У» is not part of the verb, «у» is a preposition. Literally, it means something like 'at', but here «у нас» indicates a possessor (like 'at our possession').
You can use «у» to indicate possessor with both «есть» (у нас есть масло 'at our [possession] there-is butter) and «нет» (у нас нет масла 'at our [possession] there-is-no butter).
The reason it is not correct is because 'не есть' is combined into 'нет' when encountered, and the noun 'butter', here 'масло', has to be placed in the genitive form as it follows 'нет', meaning it becomes 'масла'.
For more information on morphing the words to the right shape and form, consider using: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/morphque.cgi?flags=endnnnnp or http://www.morfologija.ru/
Note that the first one does not take the ё character (replace it with a regular 'е' ) and that the second provides output where the forms (nominative, genitive, dative, etc.) are in Russian, so you'll have to figure out which one is which or what the order is before you can accurately apply the results.
there are 4 different kinds of butter (car oil salad oil, cooking oil and butter for toast or crumpet etc)
This translation is now accepted. I'm surprised it wasn't before, it's almost literal...
It is a preposition that translates commonly as "At, by, near". Here it is used with a pronoun to demonstrate possession.
When in doubt, wiktionary is a good resource for verb conjugation and noun/adjective declension. https://ru.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BC%D1%8B
Great mnemonic: think of Mazola vegetable oil... OK, but I could really use some etymology detectives on the Mazola brand name. A quick Google Translate quest seems to eliminate Italian, (Hungarian mazol- seems to mean "painter," ??) and the brand's website isn't much help. The resemblance to масло/масла meaning oil or butter can't be a coincidence!
Good mnemonic! Mazola is a branded name for corn oil, as Latin languages and English speakers outside the USA usually call corn "maize".
It is genitive case: http://www.russianlessons.net/lessons/lesson10_main.php In the future please read other comments if you have questions like these - I can see the comment right below this one has a good explanation provided by Dimidov, for instance.
«У» is a preposition, it indicates a possessor («у нас» is like 'at our possession').
«Есть» is ‘there-is’ or ‘is’ (у нас есть масло 'at our [possession] there-is butter). «Есть» can be omitted sometimes when it’s not emphasised in the sentence.
«Нет» is ‘there is no’, the negative form of «есть» (у нас нет масла 'at our [possession] there-is-no butter).
Hello, i got a question: how would we be able to mention a countable item (sic. The) in Russian? У нас есть масло would designate a butter, not the butter. Thanks much
"Butter" is not countable in Russian or English, so it can only be "butter" or "the butter", but not "a butter".
Otherwise, you could just say the noun itself (У нас есть кошка) or specify with a number (У нас есть одна кошка), but by just saying the noun itself it is clear that you only have one.
Butter is not a countable object, so you can't have "a" butter or "two butters". You can have a stick of butter, or a pound of butter, or a type of butter, but you can't have "a butter".
Why does not "does" work, I know it is incorrect, but I am Not here to learn english
Have I got it correct if I say that: У меня есть = I have (literal: near me is...) У меня нет = I don't have (literal: not near me is...)
I just learn easier if I not only learn what phrases mean but also how they translate literally; how they mean if you will. :)
How can I tell "есть" and "ест" apart in speaking? How do I know if someone HAS butter or is EATING butter?
Why is "we don't have a butter" wrong and "we do not have a butter" that's just confusing!!
@Nicholas696 - Both of those are incorrect; "butter" is an uncountable noun, you would not use an indefinite article with it. So if the program does accept "have a butter" then that should probably be reported as a mistranslation the next time you encounter the exercise.
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Please check the accent in the russian word "масла". It should be "мАсла", instead of "маслА".
Nominative: ма́сло - ending in "o", so it must be neuter.
Hence the Genitive is ма́сла.
