34 Comments
I'm giving up! For the last two times in this section "koshki" was marked wrong in the plural - now it is marked wrong in the singular! I've now got eleven successive questions wrong. Destinctly demotivating!!!!!
Just remember: use nominative for something you have and genitive for something you don't.
- Singular: у меня есть кошка - у меня нет кошки
- Plural: у меня есть кошки - у меня нет кошек
"Кошки" may be one cat in genitive or two or more cats in nominative.
1120
"The woman has a cat"
Why it is incorrect if according to the translation кошки also means "a cat"?
I edit, instead of delete, in case someone else makes the same question.
I realized that it's because кошки means "cats" in nominative and "cat" in genitive. To recognize them you have to look at the phrase. In this case, it has a "У" and a "есть" and those words requires a genitive word.
"A woman has cats" suggests that it is some typical or random woman. This English sentence looks odd to me. If we are talking about some woman and saying that she has cats, certainly, it is "the" women, not "a" woman. Am I wrong? In Russian, we express the difference between "known" and "new" things or people by context or word order. "New" things usually come at the end of the sentence.
it's not supposed to be about typical sentences, if it were, there'd be no "bear wears her dresses" in duolingo. it's supposed to be about correct translations, and "a woman" is equally correct translation as "the woman". I'm not a mind reader, I can't be expected to guess what sentences sound typical or atypical to someone else, nor is it relevant if translation is correct. russian doesn't use articles, and it's ridiculous how many errors we get solely on missed articles. If I'm learning russian, then app shouldn't be molesting me over articles in english, especially not cause it makes sentence sound atypical. I don't care, half of my translations in german course sound atypical, cause I can't be bothered to type typical longer sentences, and it's always accepted. for some reason, it's as if the app doesn't want us to learn russian, as they make big fuss over nonsense no one cares for. if you go and read some tweets that are written in english, you'll find most of them don't even use articles at all in an effort to cram your thoughts into 140 characters, yet no one has problems understanding what the tweet means. this will over time cause lesser usage of articles in regular conversation as well, as the meaning articles bring is often easy to infer even if you omit them. not to mention that is relatively easy to figure out how to translate sentence from the language you are trying to learn to a language you already know, and app should go easy with those sort of questions and focus more on much harder, translating from language you know, to a language you are trying to learn. So it's a waste of time question that is preposterously easy and therefore a waste of time, made even bigger waste of time by forcing us to repeat it because we used articles someone else finds makes sentence sound atypical. utter nonsense.
- 329
I'm totally agreeing with you! I want to learn Russian and not English. Also for me, there's waaaaay to few translations asked from English to Russian, which in my opinion would be far more challenging but also massively more rewarding and highly more beneficial to understanding and learning the foreign language Russian. Are we the only two here that feel this way?
Let's stay motivated, I just realised I can now use the declination tables in my book of russian (for Russians). That book that I had not openend for 1 year because it was so hard. Thank you duo-team ! Having those tables around does make things easier to understand.
I still don't get the use of "у" in this sentence. Can anyone help me understand, please?
The verb "have" is conjugated as a compound structure "У owner (genitive) есть object (nominative)". It can, and will, get more complicated when other sentences add pronouns such as "this" and the negative is a bit different than that but "У" will always be present. I'm level 8 in Russian and that's the way I understand it so far. I hope that helps.
it's just the way russians compose this sentences. in the infinite wisdom of rick of rick and morty, "don't think about it". it's not like all sentence structures in english make sense either when you think about them. especially the supposed "simple, common sentences". but as you speak english for years, or maybe even lifetime, you just don't notice the weird constructions anymore. as example, why would there be "welcome" in "you're welcome"? it's not like I got here, but I bet that one doesn't bother you.
Haha so I'm definitely confused, help me out! so I see the genitive case has us using the same as the plural form for woman... Is this always the case? Does the singular genitive use the form of the nominative plural? Are there any easy ways to remember these rules? Thanks in advance!
- 1120
Well, according to the rules, in nominative, the plural words ends with "ы", "и", "а" and "я". Sadly, mostly singular genitive words, also ends with the same letters, so many times is confusing. Specially with femenine words. The only way to notice the difference, it's looking for "hints". Like in this case, that is the "У" that always requires genitive.
I hope that this helps.
Read through the discourse, and I'm still a bit confused so trying to explain it back in how I think I understand it
The subject behind the У requires a genitive case?
While because we're talking about having (есть) then what follows is nominative?
How to distinguish genitive plural vs genitive singular? The woman has vs the women have? Thanks! :)
Would you mind translating what your wrote? I'm still confused.
You wrote: У женщины есть кошки. (singular) - Does this mean: The woman has cats (or?) (when you say singular, are you referring to the woman?)
You wrote: У женщин есть кошки. (plural) - Does this mean: The women have cats (or?) (when you say plural are you referring to the women...or the cats?)
Thanks for your time and clarification!
The question was how to distinguish between genitive singular and plural. "The woman has vs the women have". I answered that question.
Woman/women женщины/женщин is the genitive. Cats hasn't changed in my examples. The word is always the same, кошки, nominative plural.
У женщины есть кошки. (singular) is the original sentence. The translation is given already by Duo. "The woman has cats." The second sentence is the plural and is the other example that had been asked for. У женщин есть кошки - The women have cats.
У женщины есть кошки. (singular) - the woman has cats
У женщин есть кошки. (plural) -the women have cats
As an aside: In American English, when some "has kittens (baby cats)", it means that they are upset about something, usually to an unwarranted or undeserved degree. When a child gets very upset because he/she can't have something he/she wants and starts acting badly because of it (crying, whining, stamping feet, being a pest), you could say the child is "having kittens".
It's not the same for adults having cats, though maybe it could be used that way if the context made it clear.
