"A dog is lying on the ground."
Translation:На земле лежит собака.
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That means "The dog is lying on the ground". A lot of what English conveys through articles is conveyed through word order in Russian.
So the difference between "Собака лежит на земле" and "На земле лежит собака" is that the first sentence would imply the use of "the dog" in English while the second would imply the use of "a dog"?
Yeah. It's not as simple as subject first = "the", subject late = "a', but both of those things developed to solve the same problem: to tell people what in your sentence is new information, and what is just connecting things already mentioned.
If you say собака first, that sounds like the dog is already established as a topic of conversation, so you're telling someone where some dog is which you were already talking about. If you put it at the end, it sounds like the dog is new information, so it can't be "the dog", which is a dog that's already part of the conversation.
Try reading here about the word order in Russian. It actually conveys some useful information, often the one that you convey with articles in other languages.
На земле лежит собака. A DOG is lying on the ground.
Собака лежит на земле. THE DOG is lying on the ground.
Где собака? Собака лежит на земле where is the dog? The dog is on the ground. " A dog" doesn't work here. Что лежит на земле? На земле лежит собака what is lying on the ground? A dog/ the dog is lying on the ground. Both work here.
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Your example was that piece of the puzzle that was missing, it finally clicked what people meant with "new information" with thr word order. Thank you very much!
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I am curious about this. Is there any native russian willing to give an input about this question? Would "на земле собака лежит" be a valid sentence?
It's a valid sentence but it's not exactly neutral and is an unlikely translation of the original English sentence. It stresses "лежит" - whenever you deviate from the "default" SVO (subject-verb-object) order, you tend to stress the last word of the sentence -- the new information it conveys. So here you are "rubbing in" the fact the dog is lying, as opposed to sitting, standing etc. Furthermore, since "coбака" is not the last word in your sentence, the natural assumption is that we already know what dog we are talking about, which clashed with English "a dog". For that reason it's an unlikely translation of the original sentence.
That said, in speech you can always override this by a vocal stress but that's how it works in writing.
You can read more on the Russian word order here
if we were to say 'на земле собака'', would it mean 'there is a dog on the ground', does sentence sound alright, or is it normal for native speakers to speak in that manner?
"лежат" is for "они", "лежит" for "он"
Just like "говорит" vs "говорят", but "а" appears here instead of "я" because of the spelling rule: never я after ж.
So it figuratively translates into "The grass is under the dog"?
Now I kinda understand the reverse Russian jokes. "In Soviet Russia television watches you."
Not really. It literally translates into "On the ground lies a dog". Not exactly the most natural English, but not that outlandish either.
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When we want to specify position in which the object is ( лежит, сидит, стоит). If it doesn't matter, you can just say "на земле (находится) собака". But it would sound better with these verbs.
is 'lezhit" needed? It meains 'there is" so it would be translated as on the ground there is a dog. Can na zemle sobaka be accepted?
Firstly, "to lie" does not have to be an action - it can be a state: you lie in your bed while asleep, no action involved. (Don't mix it with "laying something down" which is always an action, but is inapplicable here).
But in any case, action or not, собака here is a subject, not an object and hence should be nominative.
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-е ending usually means the prepositional case, usually it refers to a fixed location and comes after на or в.
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yeah. my only error was using "земля" instead of "земле", but I don't speak linguist. how am I supposed to know this. makes no sense.
Because you've wrote "эемле" instead of "земле". Pay attention to "з" and "э" - they are different letters.
"З" is a consonant. It sounds close to "z" in "zoo"
"Э" is a vowel. Sounds (sort of) like "а" in "cat".
I am sorry :) anyway this is not really important question. Some asked about order of words (собака на траве vs на траве собака) I understand the difference between asking "what is somewhere" and "where is something" But I mean, what if I want say: "I am not going there because there is a dog on the grass" Now I realized I wouldnt use this answer :) I would say Я не иду потому там собака Thanks for trying understand, i think I just was too tired yesterday, so I posted weird and unnecessery question. :)
Я не иду потому там собака
That would mean "I am not going, therefore there's a dog there.". For "because" you have to say "Я не иду, потому что там собака".
L'ordre des mots pour les francais. Super bien expliqué http://russe.inalco.chez.com/L0GRAM/GRAM_LO/ordre_mots.htm
