"В коробке мяч."
Translation:There is a ball in the box.
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And we are staring to see how awkward the English grammar is. What you write with only 3 words in Russian needs 7 in English.
True. By the way, an easy way to remember the Russian word for ball is to imagine a MATCH (myatch) striking a BALL - or a major leagues player holding a giant match instead of a baseball bat
Hello amigo, Your mnemonics technique to remember a Russian word is very useful, althogh I almost find impossible to find the corresponding with some of them. I started to make a mnemonic dictionary translating from Russian to English&Spanish. Do you have somthing similar that we could exchange?
There's a whole website dedicated to memorizing words in other languages (and even studying other stuff) using such mnemonics. It's called memrise.com - you can look for me on there under the same username. I started a Babylonian Talmud Aramaic course with audio - if you look for that, that should help you find me. You can even make your own course on that website
Continuing: For example the above word каробка. sounds like a KARAOKE a place (box?) to sing
Actually, this is where we not only start, but frequently see how awkward Russian is without these words. These words make the statement more precise, so we don't need to clarify two or more times.
In English, "THE ball is in the box." referring to a specific ball. Or "A ball is in the box." Might not even be the ball you want.
In Russian, "В коробке мяч." could be talking about "The ball", or "A ball", more clarification needed.
Also, literally everything else is very awkwardly not precise. "Она идёт" - You have no idea if she's coming or going.
Vera drives slowly by, and Boris says "Она очень красивая!" Ivan punches his best friend in the face, for talking about his wife. Then feels dumb when Boris says he was talking about the car.
And just about every question can be confused for a statement, and vice versa, if an inflection isn't properly pronounced. Where as in English, swapping two words eliminates this problem. "This is" "Is this"
You can verify all this, right here in duolingo, where each Russian sentence has many correct variations of answers. Она ест яблоли. - She IS eating apples. She eats apples. Awkwardly, two completely different meanings.
You are right. But remember that you have to know and be able to use all endings in Russian. That is a payment)))
I wrote "the ball is in the box" and it showed incorrect, shouldnt it be correct??
I answered "the ball is in the box", but was marked wrong because the answer was "there is a ball in the box". How are these different?
I want to ask, this sentence want to emphasise the fact that the ball is in the box, or want to emphasise the fact that the box has a ball inside it? Another way of asking is, does this sentence answer this question "where is the ball?" Or " what is in the box? "
You could try reporting it, but in English you would be pointing out both the ball and the box equally. I think that the Russian is emphasizing that in this location is a ball. So this is an answer to "What is in the box?" Your sentence answers "What is there?", but I don't know if they would structure the sentence differently for that. They do mention that if the question were "Where is the ball?" the ball would come first in the Russian with the location last and I am not sure if yours would be better with that form or not.
Is that why the cat got in the box? To play with it? (I got the two sentences back to back and it amused me.)
Honestly, I didn't understand a single word (except В) but somehow the word options seemed so typical for a beginner's sentence and I guessed it correctly.
Where is the "there" in this sentence? What's wrong with "a ball is in the box"?
How would we be able to distinguish between the ball being "on" the box and "in" the box.
All these "В чём-то что-то" seem to have an incorrect emphasis, it doesn't feel right. In this case "В коробке мяч" is more like "In the box there's a ball" than "the ball is in the box" (which would be "мячь в коробке"). The exact meaning of "в коробке мяч" depends on the context.
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Я ответил "The ball is in the box". Но DL поправил "the ball" на "a ball". Почему в моём варианте нужен артикль "a", а не "the"?
I answered "The ball is in the box". But DL corrected "the ball" on "a ball". Why in my version need article "a", not "the"?
What is the difference in russian between this accepted answer and the ball is in the box????
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No, коробке isn't the genitive. It is the prepositional case which tells you where something / somebody is.
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Sorry, I'm new learning Russian and not a native English speaker. I translated the sentence as the ball is in a box. It didn't accept it. Which would be the difference, how can I say the ball is in the box. I want to compare and understand differences. Anybody can help me? Tks!
With a proper context (when both speakers are aware of the box and the ball):
Мяч в коробке.
Usually an already known information are placed earlier in the sentence. Then goes a new information.
There is no way to say "the ball in THE box" using only provided words with no context. But you may say something like this:
Мяч в той/этой коробке.
The ball in that/this box.
The only problem with this, is that two questions later, "На траве мяч и коробка." comes along, and the default duolingo translation is "A ball and a box are on the grass."
So, by this logic, the duolingo translation should be considered wrong, and the answer should be "There is a ball and a box on the grass."
I believe, like many other sentences in duolingo, that both answers should be correct, but it just hasn't been fixed.
yeah, you are right. Please report the issue every time you see it. It "may" helps to draw the moderator's attention.