"У меня нет девушки."
Translation:I do not have a girlfriend.
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This is hilarious! My girlfriend does this, my girlfriend likes to do that. And then , toward the end: I do not have a girlfriend. Well done, DL.
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I was also happy in the beginning that I have her, even if it's imaginary, in DL... but then this one broke my heart :(
don't worry. after this course you will have a girlfriend from Russia, Ukraine or Belarus:D
I got a russian girlfriend with only the first checkpoint done. Keep the hope up
If his girlfriend eats on the bed, doesn't cook and likes only to sleep, he should be grateful that he dodged the bullet.
I think it goes with the territory of language learning to have a lot of drama in the story.
My boyfriend and i are learning together on DL. Not sure how i feel about them teaching him this phrase though..
There are thouse lucky ones whose girlfriends' speak their target language, soo... (° ο°) But otherwise I believe your parlance to be accurate on most dudes shuahsuahs'
How do we differentiate between "Girlfriend" and "girl" as in daughter? I translated it as "I don't have any girls" but was marked as incorrect.
«У меня нет девушки» can only be used about a girfriend (more precisely, lack thereof). With girls as daughters you MIGHT use «У меня нет девочек» but that would be a rather odd choice.
So a more natural way to say "I don't have a daughter"would be "у миня нет дочи"?
У меня нет дочери (or У меня нет дочки).
Note that мать and дочь have irregular oblique forms and plurals (e.g., матери and дочери). They are all formed as if the words were «матерь» and «дочерь».
I would venture a guess that the original words for "mother" and "daughter" were indeed «матерь» and «дочерь» but they were shortened over time. This guess is based on the resemblance to the English words, as well as to the German «Mutter» and «Tochter», which suggests similar words in PIE.
Am I right?
Yes, although I don't know Russian etymology I believe you're right. You can add Latin to illustrate your "mother" example: mater (as in "alma mater")
Yep, it was like that. In Church Slavonic it's 'дщерь', and it's used sometimes in writing for an archaic and/or ironic effect.
У меня нет дочь is the correct translation for i have a daughter right ?
No. It means "I don't have a daughter". Can a native Russian speaker tell me if "daughter" should be in the genitive case after a negative?
A Russian speaker told me to think of it, "Of a girlfriend, I have not." In Russian, you don't have "of" something.
I wish you could see the tears roll down my face as you made me type this you filthy animals
There is nothing in the comments about the declension of девушка. I do not understand why the translation is not "I don't have any girls." Please someone explain this. It is obvious to me that a father who has children would say he has no daughters when he means he has only sons. So please explain why the translation would not also imply that. Isn't the correct word for girlfriend подруга? Thus I completely fail to understand the developer's correct answers. I need both declension and idiomatic usage discussed, as well as for comparison the more formal usage.
подруга is a word for a friend who is a female. It is also what you might use for a girlfriend if you are that modest and shy. Девушка is the de facto standard. It gets fuzzier with boys because there is neither an agreed-on term for a young male, nor a universal word for a boyfriend. Молодой человек, even though a bit formal in sound, is the most widespread term for the latter among people approximately my age. Парень is also an option, quite informal in sound.
Девушка's plural is девушки. The word's Genitive singular is девушки, and the Genitive plural is девушек.
The word девушка also means a young woman (older than 12-15 but usually younger than 30). These are not usually possessed.
It is also what you might use for a girlfriend if you are that modest and shy
Around me, подруга is rarely used for a man's female friends. For me, this largerly is the word to describe a woman's female friends. For male's friends, I would use друг regardless of the gender (women can use друг too), and when a male calls someone подруга, this more often than not means a 'girlfriend'.
Of course, this is not universal (obviously, «Подруга дней моих суровых» can't be understood this way :D), but probably it can explain why some people suggest подруга as a translation for 'girlfriend'.
Yeah, I prefer знакомая for my female friends. Actually, I don't think I use подруга for my friends at all.
Please translate "подруга дней моих суровых" and give its source. It sounds like a quotation from one of the Russian classics - Pushkin? - but you probably can't rely on Duo students' knowledge of the Russian classics in their original version.
Well done! It does, indeed, appear to be Pushkin
(link has side-by-side English/Russian translation, though I'm just a student as well so I can't speak to the quality of it)
Given the plural of Девушка is девушки..... Could this be translated to "I have no girlfriends"?
No. Девушки is the nominative plural as well as genitive singular, but нет requires genitive case. Genitive plural is девушек.
Sorry for leaving a clutter comment, but I have to say that when people answer my silly questions, it puts a lot of value in this site for me and relieves my frustration. I think I am slowly developing a better understanding of the cases, thank you!
Нет requires genitive case, so "девушки" here is genitive singular, not nominative plural. If it was "girls" then the Russian would need to be "девушек". As for "girlfriend" - I too had learned that the correct word was "подруга". It seems though, based not only on this course but on everything else I've read, that that was incorrect and the correct word, in modern Russian usage at least, is in fact "девушка".
Yet, my russian friends say it often for girlfriend, also for female good friend.
- 1606
in a previous sentence "Дженни не девушкА но моя кошка" if I remember well, it was explained that "девушка" should be in nominative case and not genitive even if it is negative....so why genitive here?
- 2134
My girlfreind is just like an ANGEL. Because people say it is exist but I never seen her before..
Does it drive anyone else crazy when testing for a higher level that Duolingo keeps switching back and forth (almost from screen to screen) between typing in Russian and typing in English? Why can't they have the English portion and then the Russian. A small complaint, but to me it's like the ancient Chinese water torture . . . drip, drip, drip . . .
It would be much better if several questions could be done in Cyrillic script, then others in Roman script. It is not very difficult to learn to type in Cyrillic script, which maps easily onto the Qwerty keyboard, once one has copied out a Cyrillic keyboard, and switched one's keyboard language to Russian. It is however very annoying to have to change keyboards every other question.
:c
quit reminding me, please.
Edit: literally two questions later, they made me say it.
Девушка would be the default term for a "girlfriend." You shouldn't encounter девочка being used in a romantic sense.
Девочка refers to a little girl and девушка to a girl in her teens (also to a girlfriend).
In colloquial speech, though, it is more complicated because females often call each other девочки regardless of age. Essentially, девочка becomes "a female who is not older (much older) than me".
My grandmother met her friends every week to play cards. They were all in their eighties, but she still called them the girls, because they were women who were not older, or not much older than my grandmother.
We do too. Usually groups of ladies. There used to be a comedy called the Golden Girls. They were in their 60s 70s and 80s.
And we sometimes refer to a girlfriend (mostly if you're a male), as my girl. If shes a friend of a male or female, she can be a подруга. All true Shady? Any additions?
Well, sometimes it is plural, but not here.
Russian nouns have several forms called cases. The most common case is nominative, it’s used when girls is the subject of the sentence:
- Де́вушка чита́ет ‘A/the girl is reading’
- Де́вушки чита́ют ‘[The] girls are reading’
So, you’re partially right, де́вушки is indeed plural in many situations.
But to express absence, we use «нет» with a different form, genitive case. In genitive case, де́вушки is singular, and де́вушек is plural:
- Здесь нет де́вушки ‘There is no girl here’
- Здесь нет де́вушек ‘There are no girls here’
This is also the form used after «у», the a preposition to express possessor:
- У де́вушки нет книг ‘[The/a] girl doesn’t have books’
- У де́вушек нет книг ‘[The] girls don’t have books’
So, «де́вушки» can be both nominative plural or genitive singular. You need to use the context to find out the exact meaning: if it’s preceded by «у» or used with «нет», then it’s genitive singular. In other cases, it’s likely to be nominative plural.
You probably don't, since "I have not a girlfriend" is not a phrase anyone would use.
Do we really have to be so strict about dropping "a" from answers? Some get accepted and some aren't, would be nice if it would be standarized.
Sentences should (ideally) be written in passable English:
- Это вода. = This (that, it) is water OR This (that,it) is the water
- Вот стул. = Here is a chair / Here is the chair.
Single words or short fragments might drop the initial article:
- вода = water/ the water
- высокое здание = high(tall) building / a high (tall) building / the high (tall) building
- крыша здания = roof of the building / roof of a building / the roof of the building / the roof of a building / a roof of the building / a roof of a building / the building's roof / building's roof /a building's roof
Is девушка used only for girlfriend or it could also mean young girl?, if not, How do you say young girl?
Is girlfriend in genitive because of negation, or because she is possessed by the subject?
It is negation. Нет will cause the subject to switch to the Genitive (same with не было and не будет):
- У меня есть девушка.
- У него была девушка.
- У него не будет девушки.
- У меня нет девушки.
- У меня не было девушки
Why are you going to die alone? Do you want to or something? Are you already an old man, and I mean over 80? Is there something seriously wrong with you? Do you not take a shower more than once a week? If your answer to all of these is no, then why don't you come to Kyiv and make some lovely girl happy? Don't you know what the quarantine has done here? There is NO government safety net here for single moms, no work means no money which means they and their kids are lucky to have a potato a day to eat. You don't need to be perfect to be a man and adopt a family. And if you are too old to be a Dad, be a grandpa.
Duolingo has given me this sentence two times in a row, one in English to translate and then in Russian. Спасибо дуо :(
It is the Genitive singular form, which often looks the same for -а/-я-ending nouns and a few others.
typical consonant-ending nouns have different endings:
When you have у меня нет, the negation means that it requires the genitive form; the genitive form of девушка is девушки.
Because when you say that someone doesn't have something or that there isn't something with нет, you need to use the genitive case.
This is the kind of sentence where you just know you're going to find some good replies when you'll go and look...
I thought DL said девушка is a singula and девушки is plural. But what has gone wrong now when I say I do not have girlfriends (у меня нет девушки)?
Девушки is also the genitive singular. When you negate the existence of something with нет, you need to use the genitive case. "I have no girlfriends" requires the genitive plural (У меня нет девушек).
Девушки is also the genitive singular, not just the nominative plural. When negating the existence of someone/something with нет, you need the genitive case. If you wanted to say "I have no girlfriends," you would need the genitive plural – У меня нет девушек.
Question, and his is mostly theoretical because the actual difference in statements is pretty much meaningless. In russian, is there a difference between declaring 'I have no girlfriend' and 'I have no girlfriends'? As in, does pluralising the thing that you don't have actually affect what grammar rules apply?
Why sometime they wrote девочка sometimes девошка? . I m just confused .
Девочка - little girl/teenager. Девушка - young (an sometimes not so young) girl, or a girlfriend. Here it's used in its second meaning.
At last , after so many phrases with bread and bicycle , This one is useful
