33 Comments
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
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? "
1542
I guess
В коробке мяч. There is a ball in the box.
Мяч - в коробке. The ball is in the box.
is what you're after.
Thanks Johan, yes, this is what I was after :) So if someone ask in Russian "Where is the ball?" I should be using Мяч - в коробке, is that right?
How would we be able to distinguish between the ball being "on" the box and "in" the box.
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.
Is Russian SVO?
BTW NOW we're learning ball? That's the first thing we learn in school (besides aplpe)
- 1631
I put "At the box there is a ball." and it was marked wrong. How come?
- 1542
In this context, "в" means "in". When you say "At the box there is a ball," it may be interpreted as "Next to the box there is a ball."
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.
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.
- 637
No, коробке isn't the genitive. It is the prepositional case which tells you where something / somebody is.
- 579
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"?
