57 Comments
I believe that the translation "I don't have the glasses" should be fine. I could be talking about "the glasses you are searching for" (I guess this wasn't implied, but it was my first thought). Should I report it?
Right. Just like the English glasses, the word «очки́» is a pluralia tantum noun, they don't have a singular form (well, they do, but it means something completely different).
Most commonly, it's 'point' (e.g. in games, hit points = очки́ жи́зни 'points of life'). See other meanings here.
This word also has less polite meanings, see Wiktionary (note that I don't think I've ever encountered the meaning 6; but 5 and 7 are pretty common).
In American English, there's a vulgar expression, "pie-hole", which refers to one's mouth, down which you ingest pie.
Seems like очко and пирог could be combined somehow to express this big of slang.
I've observed that Genitive is sometimes used to express "some [quantity of a thing]". In English, when using the negative, we'd more often say "I don't have any glasses" rather than "I don't have glasses".
Does casting objects of нет in genitive also entail this idea of "any" (which is the negative of "some" in negative phrases)? That is, should "I don't have any glasses" be a an alternative, valid translation here?
This word has to be a exception to standard grammar.
очков as a genitive plural is a masculine word, according to my declension table. Just based on the table, the singular would be
очк, but that doesn't seem to be a Russian word - and it wouldn't mean anything in English either, since the word "(eye)glasses" is always plural.
szeraja_zhaba provides a link to different meanings for an ostensibly singular version of оцков, but that word is очко, which is neuter, not masculine, suggesting that it's not really related to очков except it shares some letters.
This is appears to be a weird word, deserving it's own grammatical niche of "weird words".
Other meanings of очко́ also have the gen. pl. of очко́в. E.g. «я набра́л недоста́точно очко́в в игре» ‘I didn’t get enough points in the game’.
Also, besides the same form (plural of очко́ ‘point’ and очки́ ‘eye-glasses’ sound 100% identical), there’s a noticeable semantic connection. Очко is a diminutive of о́ко ‘eye’, i.e. ‘small eye’, so it’s used for differen eye-like things, such as holes or dots/points.
(О́ко is an old word for ‘eye’. The modern Russian uses глаз. Ironically, it’s related to the English ‘glass’. It used to mean ‘a glass bead/ball’ in the past.)
According to the declension tables I've seen, -ов is not a genitive plural for any neuter endings, which simply reaffirms in my mind the notion that очко/очков is some kind of exception to the normal rules - something to be memorized.
PS: In English, there is a slang word for glasses, usually a bit insulting, when we refer to someone as "four eyes". Очков = "glasses" seems to have the same basic idea, without the slang/pejorative connotation.
«У меня́ есть очки́».
This is a weird word, since there does not seem to be any singular masculine form for it. But since the genitive plural очков is masculine, it figures that the nominative plural would also be masculine (with the Russian Spelling Rules changing -ы to -и after к).
There's no gender in the plural. I understand thinking of -ов as the masculine ending for the genitive plural since it follows a hard consonant, but I would avoid thinking of the plural in terms of gender and instead think of очки as an irregular word without a singular form and therefore without gender.
Could this sentence mean I don't wear glasses? Or that I don't have my glasses with me at the moment?
I don't pay any attention to answer written in Russian only. This is a class for non-Russian speakers, so I imagine I'm not alone. If you want people to read what you have to say, try using English, except when referring to relevant Russian words contained in the exercise. I'd like to hear your input, but....
It also bothers me that duolingo doesn't let you copy any word, so it makes it even worse, as it's hard to memorize words I've never seen, to translate one by one
The reasoning is that it is only written as -и in the plural because it is after a velar consonant (К). Usually it is a hard consonant. So, in the genitive plural, it's written as -ов.
The three velar consonants are funny, actually. There are only soft before и and е. Otherwise they're always hard.
Кя, кю, гя, гю, хя, and хю aren't really acceptable in Russian, they never pop up. Basically, the velars are only soft if the grammar forces them to be (followed by И or E in plural, prepositional, or adjectival endings.)
By the way, it isn't -ев if the last consonant is soft - it's -ей. This is also only for masculine and neuter nouns.
If you isolate -ов in a declension table, it appears in only two places under masculine words without any ending (-)
................................................ s/pl
Nominative: ....................... -/ы
Accusative (inanimate): . -/ы
Accusative (animate): ... а/ов
Genitive: ........................... а/ов
-ов is thus the accusative (animate) & genitive plural for masculine words with a "zero" ending only, whose nominative plural form is -ы, except that under the Russian Spelling Rules, you change -ы to -и when it comes right after К.
This is difficult to look up because there's no masculine singular form of очки/ов. There is a neuter word очко, but it has nothing to do with glasses. It's very strange. The usual rules don't seem to apply.
Note: you change -ы to -и after Г, К, Х ,Ш, Ж, Щ, & Ч under the Spelling Rules.
only
Such tables list the most common patterns, they are not exhaustive.
1350
Yes if you want to say that you hadn't earned scores. It will be absolutelly the same sentence with the different meaning (different from the meaning of the sentence in the task). In Russian "points" (/"scores") and "glasses" translate the same word "очки".
You are also lucky you don't have multiples of some of the other things that очко means, see: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%BE
The two words - очко & очки = "glasses" - don't seem to be related, at least not in meaning or definition.
If it means 'glasses', it's a pluralia tantum noun: it has no singular form, just plural. Since Russian doesn't distinguish gender of plural nouns, it has no gender, really.
If it means 'points', then очко́ is neuter.
It’s not masculine, it just has an non-standard gen. pl. form. This gen. pl. form occurs for diminutive neuter nouns that have a -к- suffix:
- очко́ ‘point, hole’ — gen. pl. очко́в (originally diminutive of о́ко ‘eye’),
- колёсико ‘castor wheel, small wheel’ — gen. pl. колёсиков (diminutive of колесо́ ‘wheel’),
- ли́чико ‘small face’ — gen. pl. ли́чиков (diminutive of лицо́ ‘face’),
- дре́вко́ ‘shaft, pole’ — gen. pl. дре́вко́в (originally ‘small tree’, diminutive of дре́во ‘tree’; both stress places are correct),
- пле́чико ‘small shoulder’, pl. пле́чики ‘coat-hanger; shoulderpads’ — gen. pl. пле́чиков (diminutive of плечо́),
- брюшко́ ‘small/cute belly’ — gen. pl. брюшко́в (diminutive of брю́хо ‘abdomen, belly’),
- озерко́ ‘small lake’ — gen. pl. озерко́в (diminutive of о́зеро; rare, a more common form is озерцо́).
Some words that have this ending are not diminutives:
- о́блако ‘cloud’ — gen. pl. облако́в (it used to be masculine, облок, but it became neuter in modern Russian),
- су́дно ‘ship, vessel’, irregular nom. pl. суда́ — gen. pl. судо́в,
- остриё ‘cutting edge; spike, sharp tip’ — gen. pl. остриёв.
(And there’s also де́ло, which normally has gen. pl. of дел, but it has a gen. pl. of дело́в in a set expressions дело́в-то ‘big deal!’).
- 1350
"Очки" is in nominative case (имени́тельный паде́ж) and "очков" is in genitive (роди́тельный):
what happened to stakan? Is there no plural for stakan and thus ochkov is used?
- 1350
Девочка (singular) = девочки (singular genitive)
девочки (plural nominative) = девочек (plural genitive)
I jumped the do: "I not have glasses". Wrong. OK, but in English or in Russian?
Is it wrong to say "I have not glasses"? Duo always says wrong. I remember old lessons telling the contrary.
I'm not a native speaker, but I believe the default way of saying this in modern English is 'I don't have glasses', while 'I have not glasses' is old-fashioned or dialectal.
The sentences and translations are added by the team manually, and sometimes they might overlook less common variants (but might add them in other sentences).
If you want to test the beta and find inconsistences, feel free to report them here (and also using the Report function). But if you just want to learn Russian, the best option is probably to stick to most common, modern English.
- 106
I am a native English speaker and can confirm that "I don't have glasses" is the most common, "I do not have glasses" is fine (more formal/emphatic) but "I have not glasses" sounds very unnatural.
Thank you both. It was just to improve my English. I love this new approach more regular. I would love modern english could remove the useless "s" from verbs in the third singular person (I already do it so often... ehehehe) .
I understand Duo management difficulties, and I think that details should be for discussion section only, while going deeper.
It's not silent — I can hear it. :/ Maybe there's some playback problem with your computer?
Note that it should be voiceless, [ɐtɕ'kof], because word-final consonants are devoiced.
The computer is fine - it must be may ancient ears again. The problem is that the Russian is spoken so incredibly quickly, and I can never make out the words. The slow version operates only in a dictation exercise, so I can hear it then - but I have no idea what those sounds represent. It would be such a help if a slow version were available all the time.
It's an English idiom. "I've got" = "I have" = у меня есть. "I haven't got" = "I don't have" = у меня нет. Note that in the version with "got," "have" is the auxiliary verb, and "get-got-got" is the main verb. In the version without "got," "do" is the auxiliary verb, and "have" is the main verb. Our system of 13 auxiliary verbs ("be," "have," "do" + 10 modal auxiliary verbs, including "can") is basic to English structure. It can be confusing because "be," "have," and "do" can be either auxiliary verbs or main verbs (with different meanings) and because the system is seldom taught explicitly. Students are usually left to figure it out on their own.
"got" is a kind of low-grade English. It's much better to say "I don't have" rather than "I haven't got" - except for emphatics, like "I have got to go!" "I haven't got a chance!" or in very colloquial speech.
