"Утки — это птицы."
Translation:Ducks are birds.
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Could this also mean 'Ducks, these are birds'? As if you were introducing some ducks to some birds.
This question has made my day! :D
It could have such a meaning, but then we'd use a comma, not a dash.
Great :D The first time I saw this sentence I got it right without thinking. Every time after that I've had to remind me that I'm not introducing ducks to birds :D
I think it's okay to drop it. There was this "Tips & Notes" where they said "mokka - cofe" means "moccha is coffee" (sorry if I spell anything wrong) But I don't know if it makes a difference or none.
I'm wondering the same thing as it threw me off. I would think the sentence would read "утки - птицы" if the intended translation was "Ducks are birds." The addition of зто to me adds a "these are" to the sentence, but my answer, "Ducks - they are birds", was incorrect.
2054
In the comments just above yours szeraja_zhaba posted that definition type sentences in Russian are constructed this way. If correct, presumably the presence of это lends an air of formality about it.
Well...as with other things, they need to tell us about the exceptions before they penalize us for what we don't know.
Is Duolingo recognising punctuation now? I typed "ducks are birds" and got it right, but comment appeared: "Another correct solution: ducks are birds." That's exactly what I typed. The only discernible difference between what I typed and the other solution is the full stop (the period).
I don't know why it did that--it happened to me too--but it certainly accepted some exclamation points not present in the original sentence earlier.
«Это» is not unneccessary (without it, the sentence would sound really unnatural), but it is not translated «those», it's just a way we form definition-like sentences in Russian.
«Those birds are ducks» would be «Э́ти пти́цы — [это] у́тки». In this version, «э́то» would be optional. I can't explain well why it's optional.
Because of the word это, I translated the sentence as "Ducks are these birds", and got it wrong. The correct solution is just "ducks are birds". Wouldn't it be just "Утки — птицы"?
«Утки — это птицы» and «Утки — птицы» mean the same thing in Russian, but the former is much more natural than the latter.
Of course, in the end, the meaning is the same, but I guess for the purpose of learning it is good to distinguish singular and plural here.
I'm finding it incredibly difficult to hear the differences between plurals and such. Could somebody help explain to me the different sounds please?
I'm still figuring this out also, but I think plurals usually have the "y" or "i" sound at the end. As an example, here the word for ducks sounds like UTK"I", and according to Google translate the singular word for duck is UTKA.
I do not understand why Это is used here. In previous examples, это is used for a demonstrative purpose, like: "Это лтицы" which would mean "These are birds" Therefore, would this sentence be translated as: "Ducks - these are birds" and of course the dash equates to nouns. So, why is the statement not simply: "Утки - птицы"?
Has anybody else experienced the problem where you get the same question repeatedly in a row? It happened to me on this question. It isn't that I made a mistake and got it again either; I got it five or six times in a row...
- 2054
It happens once in a while. Once or twice a year for me.
Life's a bitch. Then you die.
I love this sentence, because in our language, it rhymes and we even have a song:
Kački, to su ptači. = Утки — это птицы.
The audio is clearly the "ducks are pizza." My grandparents are Slovenian; and bird in Russian sounds like potica (nut bread). Potica and pizza do not sound the same. I expected to hear Oot-key et-ah pah-tets-wee.
For gods sake make people write sentences in the respective languages alphabets
the last time i had "the ducks are birds" i translated it as утки птицы. it was correct. does this sentence mean the same thing?
I wonder if russian speakers think about pizza when they say ptiza (bird) ;)
No, we don't. In fact, it never occurred to me that they are somewhat similar, until you mentioned it.
