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"The girl wants to know everything."
Translation:Девушка хочет знать всё.
28 Comments
Девочка is a little girl, Девушка is a teen-to-mid-twenties (and is also used as "a girlfriend", i.e. a romantic partner).
In very colloquial speech "девочки" is used, in essense, for any "female that is about my age or younger", especially amoung females themselves.
Okay, I think I get it, thank you.
Extra question please - Is there something equivalent to this rule with masc. nouns?
Not really... For a boyfriend a girl might use "парень" or, less informal, "молодой человек". Calling a boy "парень", though, is rather colloquial, so in more formal situations "молодой человек" or a slightly outdated "юноша" is used by people like teachers.
"Outdated" in the meaning that I am 28, and do not plan on using юноша as I become even older—though I am already at the stage when boys from high school seem infinitely younger.
When handwaving about a young fella you met the other day, "молодой парень" is also not unheard of.
"Мальчик" is a little boy. Women tend to use "мальчики" towards males at their workplace, too (especially those younger) but I do not find that much to my liking.
It is safe to say that there is no real "absolutely neutral" way to refer to a late teen/young adult boy in modern Russian. Парень seems slightly informal to me, молодой человек is OK for a boyfriend but a bit formal, чувак or пацан are WAY informal (dude, chap, lad).
wow, Russian can be so unfriendly to learners sometimes with all the different words with close meanings... I think I'll stick to мальчик, since all men are essentially little boys anyway ;) Thank you very much for the answer :)
Just to give some context, when I was in Russia in my early twenties, anyone who needed to get my attention would call out "молодой человек," never "мальчик." Мальчик is really only for very young boys (preteen and below, teens are all "хулиганы" (I kid)).
"Чувак" and "пацан" become much more common when you get on informal terms with people, and you'll hear it a lot when people are telling stories about some random guy ("Такой чувак пришел...").
For a collective group, "ребята" is used roughly the same way we use "guys" in English.
To echo yarjka. When I was in Russia and people wanted my attention/ didn't know what to call me, they would call me "молодой человек,".
If I recall correctly, мужик means a man who works the land, in agriculture, and often in the sense of a social class, not too much time ago under serfdom.
The root however is the same as мужчина or муж (which I think is an archaic or outdated form).
By the way, the suffix -ик seems to be very productive in indicating professional classes, as in аппаратчик and like. In earlier times, agriculture demanded a great amount of workers, and "men" would stand more or less as we speak about "handwork" or "arms", in an impersonal or depersonalized way of expression.
Watching Ekaterina series : is девушка sometimes used when addressing an aunt?
I guess that might be possible if the aunt is single and never married (not a widow). That would be similar to the old usage of calling a single woman (even if aged) "menina", that is, girl. This treatment, against our modern perception, was always respectful, and so would home servants call their young masters, even if from nobility or royalty.
I guess девушка, in its early usage, would be equivalent to "damsel", that means both a young single woman (ripe for marriage but not yet married) as well a virgin, the emphasis relying wholly on context. That would apply as well to an aged woman who didn't marry for whatever reason, and who presumably is still virgin (and that is probably implied in the Portuguese address "Menina").
Such shades of meaning tend to be forgotten as costumes change, but in Imperial Russia they would be in full usage.
Hi, I'm native speaker of russian, and I learn english. Correct is "ЭТА девочка хочет знать всё"
I agree. 'This girl' or 'the girl' for 'Эта девушка' as both specify a particular girl. On the hand. 'It is a girl' is "Это девушка". Am I correct?
If the order of "знать" and "всё" were reversed, would that emphasize "всё"?
Reminds me of Arya and Jaqen H'Gar talking. "A girl wants to know everything."
I wrote "девушка хочет всё знает." and it's wrong, being "Девушка хочет знать всё". Can someone explain to me why "знает" is left in the infinitive in this sentence?
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For the same reason you don't say "The girl wants knows everything" in English either. The use of Russian infinitive is often quite alike the English one, in this case "to know."
This is the Russian course. We generally do not translate этот as the and vice versa.
In the course of English you occasionally have этот to remind you where the definite article should be used. This course, on the other hand, is aimed at native or fluent speakers of English, who rarely forget to use articles.
So in present tense 'всё' would come before 'значит' ('эта левочка всё значит'), but in infinitive 'всё' comes after 'знать', is that correct?
Would "девочка хочет всё знать" sound weird? Or does it emphasize "know"? An example I can think of would be something like "she wants to see everything, to know everything, to own everything, ..."
