32 Comments
Instrumental (твори́тельный). The preposition «с» requires it. When used alone, itʼs usually translated «with» or «by», hence the name — it's used for instruments (я наре́зала хлеб ножо́м — I've cut the bread with the knife).
Hmm, some help here. If I understood this correctly, the instrumental case can be used with and without prepositions. And this sentence uses a preposition to denote that "I want coffee (but) with (my coffee, I also want) milk.
And if a sentence without the preposition "с" were possible, that would denote something like "I want (to make/create) coffee with milk (as my raw material).
We don't usually use instrumental case for raw materials. «Я хочу́ сде́лать ко́фе молоко́м» would mean 'I want to make coffee into milk' (i.e. transform coffee into milk), because instrumental case can also mean the result of the transformation.
Yup, I get you. Thanks. Have a lingot! :) PLUS: Is «Я хочу́ сде́лать молоко кофе» able to mean "I want to make milk into coffee" (i.e. transform milk into coffee)
Yes, of course, it would mean exactly this. Since ко́фе is indeclinable, all its cases look the same.
139
"I want a coffee with milk" was marked wrong. I am not sure whether I should report it but considering the lack of articles I have no idea how would I say "I want [some] coffee" and "I want a coffee" differently in Russian.
Same problem here... Especially since English is not my mother tongue, so sometimes I'm not sure about articles when doing languages without articles...
In most languages there is a more polite form than "I want" which would be used when requesting something ("I would like" / me gustaria / je voudrais / ich hatte gern etc.)
Is a polite form of this usually needed in Russian, or is it ok to just use "I want"?
You could use subjunctive mood. It looks like the past tense, but has an additional particle «бы»: я хоте́л(а) бы... 'I would like'.
However, I don't think I'd use this when asking for something. If I'm ordering something in a café, I think adding «пожа́луста» gives enough politeness.
If I'm in someone's house, instead of telling my wishes, I'd ask about possibility: «мо́жно ко́фе?» 'is he coffee possible? can [I have some] coffee?'. «Я бы не отказа́лся/отказа́лась от ко́фе с молоко́м» 'I wouldn't refuse/mind coffee with milk' sounds pretty polite, too.
Русские пьют кофе с молоком? В Швеции, люди обычно пьют кофе или с сливками, или без сливок.
Я не давно был вольной и тогда, моя мама сказал мне добавить мёд в чай, я это казалось странно мне, но я некогда добавил молоко в чай. Вы пьёте чай со сгущённым молоком?
Jag dricker kaffe med mjölk! Я пью кофе с молоком. :) Ну и не только я, это хорошо известный напиток.
Кроме того, многие люди пьют кофе со сгущённым молоком. Если добавить в кофе сгущённого молока, то не нужно добавлять сахар, потому что сгущённое молоко само по себе сладкое.
Интересная разница между Швецией и Россией! Кстати, многие шведские пьют кофе латте (kaffe latte) и это – почти как кофе с молоком (итальянское слова caffè latte значит «кофе с молоком»). Это я читал на Википедии и не знал раньше.
Как правило, принято различать caffè latte (ещё называется macchiato) и café au lait - первый напиток готовится только с эспрессо, а второй - с любым кофе.
I put "I want milk with my coffee," but Duolingo is saying that the translation is "I want some white coffee." Is there an error on the computer's side?
Perhaps your translation is not literal enough. It has a different structure: in English, you want milk with coffee, but in Russian, you want coffee with milk. The meaning is the same, but the sentence structure is not. I don’t know if this should be accepted.
Where is the "white" coming from? "Coffee with milk," or "milk with coffee," I understand. I don't know where the "white coffee" is from.
Duolingo allows entering alternative translations. Wikipedia says that "white coffee" is used in some countries to mean "coffee with milk", so probably this is why the contributors added it.
Then, when you enter a sentence Duolingo doesn't have in the list of the translations, Duolingo tries to find the closest sentence and says "you should have said this". Usually it works:
- If someone entered "cafe with milk", Duolingo will correct it to "coffee with milk",
- if someone entered "white cafe", Duolingo will correct it to "white coffee".
This makes sense: Duolingo presents the sentence that it the most similar to the sentence your entered. If you just made a mistake in one word, it will show you the sentence with this word corrected, and not a sentence with a completely different structure.
However, this algorithm apparently doesn't try to move words around, it seems to compare words character-by-character. So, it compares your variant "milk with coffee" with the variants it knows like this:
- "milk with coffee" and "coffee with milk" = 10 mismatched characters,
- "milk w_ith coffee" and "____ white coffee" = 6 mismatched characters.
10 mis-matched characters is more to 6 mis-matched characters, so Duolingo arrives at the conclusion that you wanted to write "white coffee" and not "coffee with milk", and when displaying an accepted variant, it shows you this variant.
This is a problem in the algorithm. The algorithm can be improved, but since Duolingo is a proprietary closed-source platform, only the Duolingo management can do this, and we don’t know if they are planning to do this.
Yes, but it would sound better if you omit the pronoun. "Я живу с мамой" will suffice.
I put "a coffee with milk" it was marked wrong so apparently the ruasian sentence means that the speaker wants coffee with milk in general as in "i like coffee with milk" doesn't it? If that's the case then what would "a coffee" translate to?
