"У меня нет очков."
Translation:I do not have glasses.
49 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
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).
Is "очки́" Masculine? I ask, because since the singular ends in "о", it's Neuter, but here: http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/nouns_genitive.php ................the "ов" ending tells me it's Masculine, and therefore the singular would have to be "очк" or "очкй"
No, очко is neuter.
While the rules yu've linked to are certainly useful, they don't cover all the cases, очки is an exception.
So "очко" simply follows the rules for pluralizing a Masculine word?
1019
Нет requires genitive. (Nominative would be очки, but that would be incorrect in this sentence.)
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?
if очки is the nominative plural, why is the genitive plural not очкев? I thought if the nominative plural ended in -ы, gen. pl. was -ов, and if the nom. pl. ended in -и, gen. pl. was -ев. спасибо
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.
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 wear glasses. - Я не ношу очков (очки). I don't have my glasses with me at the moment. - У меня сейчас нет с собой очков.
- 2470
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".
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.
- 713
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.
I would suggest that in written English, 'do not' is quite normal and not necessarily formal.
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.
- 2470
"Очки" is in nominative case (имени́тельный паде́ж) and "очков" is in genitive (роди́тельный):
- 2470
Девочка (singular) = девочки (singular genitive)
девочки (plural nominative) = девочек (plural genitive)
So after all would somebody clarify what is the exact meaning of this sentence? Is this "I do not have my glasses." or else, is this rather " I do not wear glasses." ?
I don't have any points. - This should be accepted but marked wrong. Reported.
Очков from an archaic Slavic word for eye "око", from Proto-Indo-European "hekw", from which Latin gives to English "ocular".
- 1019
Is there any possibility that this sentence could mean "I do not have my glasses"? Or is that too much of a stretch.
- 312
Why does очки go to очков? I thought only masculine words in genitive that were plural had the ов ending like мальчиков or столов.
The plural genitive is unpredictable. There are some patterns but they are "more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules" :)
Sometimes even the native speakers are not sure what is the correct form in the genitive plural. There are a lot of exceptions and irregularities. In this case it's easier to just memorize it.
