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- "Кошка — домашнее животное."
114 Comments
Ditto in French: "animal domestique". There is also "animal de compagnie", which is closer semantically but less used than the former.
And I rendered the phrase so as to end "is a domestic pet" by analogy with the French, and got a red card
Also in Italian we say "animale domestico", although sometimes the English word pet is used, especially in shops or magazines/blog about pets... that lack good taste! :-P
In greek we say κατοικίδιο which very roughly translates to "houseling"
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In Portuguese, animal de estimação, something like cherished animal. But we absorbed the English word "pet" in everyday use.
It's not just pet, it's a pet that lives in the house. Some people have dogs and cats that live outside. A barn cat or just an outside dog would be how it's being contrasted with and clarified here, not just a pet.
my partner (native speaker) just said he would probably just say "pet" haha
I finally figured it out. what they are really saying is a pet that lives in the house or house pet
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So how to say the equivalent of english concept of "domesticated animals" like sheep, cow, goat etc?
Shouldn't the answer be: Кошка-домашная животная. Since кошка if feminine.
животное (animal) is not an adjective, but a noun in its own right. It has its own gender. Many nouns that describe things that are actually male or female have two forms, one for each gender, but animal does not. животное is the only form, and its gender is neutral.
The adjective домашнее is applied to животное, so it agrees with that, rather than with the subject of the sentence (which is feminine).
You should accept "domesticated animal" because this is a common usage in American English and should be an accepted translation for DL
In my (native speaker) opinion, no. That's not the point of this sentence. A "domashnee zhivotnoe" is a domestic animal. That is NOT the same thing as a "domesticated animal" by any stretch in Russian or English. A domesticated animal is a wide genre - cows, sheep, dogs, foxes (this is a Russian course, after all ;)). However a domestic animal is just an animal that lives inside the home - a cat, a dog, a rabbit. Not a cow.
Right, not exactly. All pets are domesticated animals but all domesticated animals are not pets. We have this distinction in English but I can't figure out if Russian has any equivalent.
Domesticated animal is "одома́шненное животное". Such as a cow, sheep, bee, shepherd dog, sometimes even an elephant. This is a broader term. Obviously, most of these animals are not usually pets (дома́шние).
well I think if it's a cat involved it is better to call it a pet. Dogs may well be domesticated but not pets. But a cat? Why else would it be domesticated?
On a farm, a cat is a working animal. They suppress rodents which would otherwise destroy the crops and anything in storage, and also bring disease. The same with terriers which were bred to handle rats that are sometimes too big for a cat to handle.
To me, the cat is a pet, rather than a domestic animal. They both mean much the same, but "pet" is a much more familiar term. I would never call my cat a domestic animal. He would be offended - it sounds too formal! I think duolingo does a marvellous job in distinguishing alternative translations. In this, though, I think they are wrong to accept "domestic", and not "pet". I agree with the distinction you make between "domesticated" and "pet", though..
It accepts domestic animal. You cannot expect a computer application to accept uncommon variations and domesticated animal would be used 1% of the time vs domestic animal 99% of the time.
No, it wouldn't. You can easily say "Koshka, eto domashnee zhivotnoe." From my understanding, that's sort of the meaning of the hyphen.
The pronunciation of животное sounds like жавотное to me. Is this correct, is there a mistake in the audio, or am I just imagining things?
I think that is just the effect of vowel reduction on the syllable before the stressed one.
Actually not. И is pronounced as ы in this case because ж is never palatalized. And ы is never reduced, just like у. Of course it is pronounced with less emphasis when unstressed but the vowel quality remains.
Well, the question is if we are learning English or Russian. I wrote, "cat is a pet" and it was accepted, but it is a terrible English sentence. I just took the Russian and put it into English--as you did, Jin Lee. Both your sentence and my sentence translate the Russian correctly, but both are also NOT correct as far as English is concerned.
IMHO, both your sentence and my sentence should be rejected because they are not proper English. What might be accepted is level.zero's offering, "Cats are pets." This sentence is perfect English and absolutely natural. BUT, it is not a good translation of the Russian.
I suppose this is the problem that comes from trying to merge two languages.
Couldn't "Кошка — домашнее животное." mean that all cats are pets? "A cat is a pet." means the same thing as "Cats are pets." in English.
That's true, but in English it sounds alright to say "Cats are pets", unless you're talking about a specific cat. I had to hit backspace a dozen times because of the urge to type "cats are pets" for this sentence :\
I mean I don't want to sound rude to the non-native-English speakers who are learning Russian through here because it's not available in their language, but I'd like to point out that it is "marketed" as a "language course for English speakers", and an English speaker would either say "The cat is a pet" or "Cats are pets", and the meaning would be the same. It's not introducing anything new, it's not changing the meaning of the sentence and in fact it further solidifies the person's understanding of the language if that's how they would normally express that thought. Your example of "У меня кошка" does not relate - while it has the same word count, you can not make the same argument for the multitude of meanings that the statement possesses when compared to the sentence being discussed here.
I mean I don't want to sound rude to the non-native-English speakers who are learning Russian through here because it's not available in their language
Can't tell if assumption about me or just introducing more unnecessary complexity.
Just in case it's the first - native English speaker from an English-only country checking in!
And further to that:
and an English speaker would either say "The cat is a pet"
I would say "the cat is a pet" or "a cat is a pet" or "cats are pets".
That said, I'm clearly not changing your mind.
I find it weird that you're level 12 and you think of this as a contextual oddity of Russian. You might struggle later. This is one of the clearest questions/sentences I've encountered. (I've completed the tree)
I am not arguing that it is a "contextual oddity of Russian" at all. I'm merely affirming that this one thought in Russian can be translated into English in multiple appropriate ways, and they would be equally valid and correct without changing the meaning of the source language. Ну все-таки очевидно, что не вы понимаете о чем я говорю. Нет смысла продолжать разговор. Удачи.
an_alias and keinemeinung--I'd give you a draw on this fine bit of intellectual sparring. Compliments to both of you for trying to present your arguments clearly and not resorting to virtual fisticuffs.
Я не задавал ни одного вопроса, просто согласился с теми, кто тоже считает, что разные переводы в этом случае правильны.
That's a false equivalency.
That would be like saying У меня кошка is the same as saying У меня кошки because it's perfectly fine to say "I have a cat" or "I have cats".
They're, very clearly, saying different things.
Questions like this help you tune yourself to declensions.
Your example is a false equivalency... "У меня кошка" clearly means you have one cat. "Кошка - домашное животное" is either... "The cat is a pet" (talking about a specific cat). "The cat is a pet" (talking about the cat species in general); in this case, you can acceptably say "Cats are pets".
Like many lessons on DL there isn't enough context and so therefore either one should be acceptable.
Your example is a false equivalency... "У меня кошка" clearly means you have one cat.
Are you sure?
Because, as kpferdeort said:
кошка домашнее животное are singular
And singular would clearly mean one cat.
If you want to talk about many cats you'll need to use the plural:
Кошки - домашние животные
Кошки - plural for cat (singular in this sentence = кошка)
домашние - plural for domestic (singular in this sentence = Домошнее)
Животные - plural for animal (singular in this sentence = животное)
String the singular forms in parentheses together.
Singular + Singular + Singular != Plural is Plural.
This is one of the few times where you don't need context at all. It's extremely clear, every word is taking a singular form and none of those forms could remotely be confused with the plural.
The problem here is, there's another 100% acceptable way of expressing and translating this thought into English. Even though in Russian it is in singular, you can translate it into English in the singular or the plural and it will be correct. I'm not saying context is necessary to understand and translate it, but without context there are multiple ways to correctly translate it.
I can't reply to your latest comment but it goes back to what I said. I have a cat or I have cats are both acceptable in English but that's not what the Russian sentence is.
Translate what's in front of you, don't try to introduce other things.
You guys are arguing different perspectives that both have validity, but in my opinion the other guy's argument is stronger.
There's no significant benefit to purposefully denying users' responses over semantic differences, so long as you might reasonably expect the alternate phrase in conversation. Perhaps it's just me, but I find it much easier to learn by testing different translations of the given phrases. One of the things that irk me with Duolingo is that it only accepts very rigid, strict translations. Language in the real world is not a system of 100% true or 100% false.
But 'the cat is a pet animal' wasn't accepted. It seems to me that it should be, English being my native language.
Honestly, "The cat is a pet animal." doesn't sound natural at all to me. I guess our experiences are vastly different.
Pet animal is redundant and awkward sounding. What I think is interesting about this whole discussion though is that I realize in English we come up with more words that are very specific to one particular thing. I've noticed this in studying Spanish that like Russian the words tend to be reusing more descriptive words of what they're talking about where in English we come up with a completely new word like pet. Although now that I think about it in English pet is also a verb which means to stroke gently like we do with our pets.
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"The" is also used in a more formal register to make general statements, particularly about species / classes. "The eagle is a bird of prey." "The wheel was a Neolithic invention."
An article is required in English. Using "the" sort of implies that we know something about this cat. If we were talking about cats in general we would say "a cat." Does this answer your question?
If I leave the response: A cat is a domestic animal (pet); what is actually wrong with the answer?
A domestic "animal" could be a farm animal--pig, cow, etc. A "pet" is an animal that people keep around for pleasure.
I wish the hints would define each of the latter terms individually instead of as a single word. A recent question did just this, and I translated it incorrectly because of it but I still need to be able to recognize the words.
I can see why that's frustrating but I don't think there are too many instances of this in Russian.
'the cat is a pet animal' should be accepted. I know you don't have to put 'animal' into the sentence, but it certainly sounds ok in English to do so.
David, to me, such a sentence sounds extremely awkward. There is no need for the word "animal" because pet already means animal. "I'm eating hamburger food" sounds similar.
I agree it's not needed, but it doesn't sound awkward to me - it rolls off the tongue easily enough. Language can be a pretty flexible tool, particularly in conversational situations. I just don't think it should actually be wrong, but I guess it may be a minor cultural thing. Of course we can refer to the "teacher's pet", which would refer to a person. I think?!?!
"Teacher's Pet" is 100% idiomatic. It makes no sense if you look only at the meaning of the words.
I respectfully disagree that "The cat is a pet animal" rolls off the tongue easily. In my world at least, such a sentence grabs my stomach and pulls it out of my mouth with discomfort.
Looking back at earlier comments, it looks like we have had this discussion before. I guess we should just admit that we are different people with different experiences and leave it.
In fact, I was trying to think of a tactful way to ask if you are a native speaker of English, but last year about this time, you wrote that you are.
Where are you from?
Hi yashamax. Yes, you're right, and it's not a vitally important point. I'm from New Zealand. I think our brand of English is tilted a little more towards UK English than American, but we all understand one another pretty well. There are bound to be minor differences in our usage, which makes it all the more fascinating, and I think duolingo does a pretty good job at covering all the bases. But there are interesting discussions to be had!! interesting .
The cat is a pet animal would Mark you as a nun native speaker immediately.
Ben, you can read above and see a long discussion between DavidCorba5 and I. It looks like 4 months ago, we decided to drop it with the understanding that we are different native speakers with different ideas, that are equally correct in certain contexts. Duolingo still sees it from the point of view that "The cat is a pet animal." is not proper.
I agree, and this may be at the crux of the confusion. In English, "domestic animals" and "domesticated animals" are somewhat ambiguous. Even if the OED spells it out clearly, English speakers use them ambiguously.
I am wondering if Russian has a similar problem. Or, maybe, Russian does not have the same ambiguity and this problem only arises when translating into English. Either way, it's very confusing.
The cat is a pet, please don't talk about that, yall know that she can eat a rat, if you feed her good she can be fat, whyd you do that I don't get, get ready and set and please don't get her wet, if all conditions are met I bet she'll be a good pet. Duck you! I said please don't talk about that.
@MattinMaverick - Домашний / Домашняя
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B9#Declension
Kinda funny. I was just in a discussion with someone tonight who made a point of saying that cats are wild animals.
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A cat is a house animal shout be correct, because you cant really know that that two word russian phrase explicitly means pet.
@TheMilesto1 - Welp, that's how languages go. Sometimes it takes two or more words to express an idea, while another language found a single word for it.
The best way I can explain it I guess is that if here in America you went around talking about house animals people would immediately assume you were a non-native speaker or mentally off. For the most part even the word pet is considered redundant in English. You simply talk about your cats and dogs or whatever animal and it is understood that it is a pet. Which means it is an animal that lives in the house. It is more common to make the distinction with cats when they are not a pet. For instance the sentence "I have to go feed my feral cats" Makes sense because a feral cat is a wild cat but people also feed them. If you mean cats that are pets you would say "I'm going to feed my cats."
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Кошка is feminine. Животное is neuter. Домашнее is an adjective in neuter form to agree with животное.
That is what I wrote and it was accepted. Duo said another correct answer is "the cat is a pet"
So before we had to put 'house pet' and 'pet' was declined but now it's accepted? Ok...
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In "X is Y" statements, X and Y are usually nominative.
Домашнее животное here is nominative singular neuter
Just reassuring my guests about the Siberian tiger they spotted in the kitchen.
