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- Topic: Russian >
- "Немецкий — мой любимый язык."
100 Comments
183
This isnt true, in german you can build words like "Bundeswehrattraktivitätssteigerungsgesetzentwurf" (the draft for the law of the increase of the attractiveness of the bundeswehr) Its quite funny as a native german speaker
131
Yes, yes. In case of misunderstanding one can simply compose new german word out of little words. No need to reach for dictionary.
1708
Our cats write in the sand all the time. We just don't know how to read it. I can't begin to imagine what they think of that!
As for reading - they aren't saying. Except for what they write in the sand.
696
i translated: "German, my favourite language"
ii was considered wrong because i missed the word "is"... but i used a comma (","). I'm not complaining. I understand by now that i should be getting used to translate most of these sentences with the verb <to be>...
But I need to know more... is it so wrong to use a comma in this specific case? Or is it just Duolingo's disregard for puntuanction that, i must admit, saved me so many other times?
A comma does not replace anything in Russian, it SEPARATES parts of sentences or EMPHATHIZE a word in a sentence (there are a lot of cases where you must do it). If you put a comma here, after "German", it sounds like "German" is a name (you always put commas around the names if you are calling a person to, for example, arrest their attention). The only sign that is used to replace a word in sentences is a dash, but it's not the only reason for dashes to appear in sentences.
So commas are necessary in Russian alike other punctuation signs, they help to better show intonation and explain the meaning, and believe me there are so many such rules that you will regret even being curious about them :3
269
I feel your pain... I like russian so much that I sometimes see myself just skipping the word "is" all the time.. Like I don't see the use of it anymore.
It is from Old East Slavic nemitsi "the one speaking unintelligibly, a foreigner", based on the Proto-Slavic root. Немой "mute" comes from the same root.
Now, Germanic people were a very common type of foreigners about 500 years ago. Even the first Russian phrasebooks we know of were written by Germans. It might have been one of the factors leading to the немец narrowing down from "a dude who cannot speak Russian" to "a German".
- Germany as a single united state is a recent innovation. It is no wonder that the name of the country varies in the languages of different peoples who have had a history of contacts with Germans.
421
I'm a Croatian and I have been learning German language for 8 years in school and I have learnt nothing. I hate that language and I will never learn it because everybody goes to the Germany these years. I have 4 first relatives in Germany, and everybody in Croatia or in Bosnia and Herzegovina has at least some family there.
44
You need the copula "is" in English. Russian doesn't have the copula, so it's often replaced with -, but this sign does not have that meaning in English.
It is «Какой ваш (у вас) любимый язык?» Whenever the expected answer would be an adjectival modifier, use какой.
Что starts questions that require a noun as an answer ("What did you buy?). It is also used when a sentence is an answer ("What did you do?", "What did mom say?")—and in colloquial use что or чего can stand for an impatient "why" when asking why a person did something other that what was expected of them (so, А что ты не пришёл? means "Why did you not come?")
896
The question does not allow me to answer. I have no choices to choose from and no way to type in an answer
528
The hyphen in the Russian version is just as valid in English, so you can say "German - My favourite language".
129
The Russian sentence is a full sentence, not a sentence fragment. The — means “is”, it’s not a comma.