"Tim is a dog, he does not understand Russian."
Translation:Тим — собака, он не понимает русский язык.
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1102
google translate says : он не понимает по русски so both translations - по русски and русский язык .must be correct
835
он instead of она surprised me a bit, but I suppose it's like Ирина - директор, она ... ? if that makes sense.
Titmaus, you are correct in your knowledge of English punctuation. In English we need to have a conjunction here such as "and." Alternatively, a semicolon could be used. Many people have not learned the rules regarding commas and think that it is okay to simply throw commas in wherever their voices pause in phrasing. They are mistaken. There are ten rules allowing commas, and when a sentence does not present any of these reasons, then probably a comma should not be used. Here they are: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/commas.htm
To answer your question, Russian is a different language and has its own set of rules. It is perfectly acceptable to use a dash in Russian as is shown in this example.
493
It's fun to know that the word "собака" in Ukrainian (written exactly as in Russian) is masculine.
Shouldn't it be "понимает по-русски", or does it not matter? The following website tells me that this should be so: http://www.russianforeveryone.com/Rufe/Lessons/Course1/Grammar/GramUnit5/GramUnit5_3.htm
835
по-русски means 'in Russian', that's why they call it 'adverbial form'. While русский is the adjective 'Russian'.
672
Maybe, just maybe Tim is not a 'dog', but called so because he doesn't understand Russian...
493
"To speak (Name_of_language)" is "говорить по-(part of (name_of_language))ски" or "говорить на (part of (name_of_language))ском языке".
It is just this way ¯|(ツ)/¯
493
There are other ways of using "по": as a preposition ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/по#Russian ) and as a prefix ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/по-#Russian ).