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- Topic: Russian >
- "They will be here tomorrow."
"They will be here tomorrow."
Translation:Они тут будут завтра.
28 Comments
Even though your comment is from 8 months ago (and likely irrelevant to you), I just wanted to comment saying that using "здесь" was accepted.
That's awkward to say, like saying "They will be tomorrow here." You would have to order it "Они будут здесь завтра."
447
"Они будут завтра здесь" marked wrong. In English (and German), the preferred word order is "time, manner, place". Is there a guiding principle in Russian. I keep getting word order marked wrong, which is frustrating because it isn't discussed much (if at all) in the course material. So it's like throwing darts.
Generally, in English, "When there is more than one of the three types of adverb together, they usually go in the order: manner, place, time." See http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/about-adjectives-and-adverbs/adverbs-and-adverb-phrases-position
- 447
Would someone kindly answer the question about RUSSIAN word order? Why is "Они будут завтра здесь" wrong?
Well I'm only a learner like you but I think a general rule is that new information goes at the end, so by putting здесь at the end like that you're saying something more like "here is where they will be tomorrow". Happy to be corrected on that by someone more knowledgeable, though.
- 447
Thank you! So BOTH "Они здесь будут завтра" and "Они будут здесь завтра" are okay but "Они будут завтра здесь" is not?
I am also just a learner of Russian.
My natural answer to the question "Где они будут завтра?" would be "Завтра они будут здесь".
My natural answer to the question "Когда они будут здесь?" would be "Они будут здесь завтра" or (if I wanted to emphasize "here") "Они здесь будут завтра".
- 447
Thank you, Bill, but from "they will be here tomorrow," can we really infer that the preceding question was "Когда они будут здесь?" Doesn't it depend entirely on oral inflection? A wee bit of stress on the word "here" and the question becomes "Где они будут завтра?" Or stress "they" or "will" and the question changes yet again.
I like Katie's guidance: put the new information at the end, but I still don't see how anyone can say that the statement "they will be here tomorrow" is intended to answer "who," "where" or "when"? Without audible inflection, it is impossible to ascertain what information is actually "new."
Based on what has been said, I maintain that "Они будут завтра здесь" was correct all along. If DL wants us to infer stress on words in their objectively neutral English sentences, it needs to do so more explicitly. Otherwise, answering the written English prompts is just random guesswork.
My suggestion: spoken English should accompany all questions posed in English, exactly as spoken Russian already accompanies all written questions posed in Russian. There would be a lot less ambiguity. And a lot less frustration.
Variants that are accepted are:
Они здесь будут завтра.
Они будут здесь завтра.
Они завтра будут здесь.
Завтра они будут здесь.
- 447
That's helpful, thank you. So a word order "rule of thumb" is that a temporal phrase, in this case завтра, should precede the verb unless it is the point of the sentence, in which case it should be placed at the end. Is that accurate?
I wouldn't really say TMP is preferred in English.
"I'm travelling tomorrow by plane to Germany" sounds less natural to my ears than "I'm travelling to Germany by plane tomorrow" or even "I'm travelling to Germany tomorrow by plane", for instance.
- 447
My question is whether there is a guiding principle for word order in Russian, i.e., why was the word order "Они будут завтра здесь" rejected? Time, manner, place is a tried-and-true way to get things right in German and won't hurt you in English. But yes, there is freedom in English to move words around, depending on intended emphasis, more evidently than in Russian. Can anyone actually address my question?
Very long ago, back in Old East Slavic, it meant 'during the morning'. За meant 'during' when it was used with Genintive (not in modern Russian!), утра is a genitive of утро 'morning'. Back then, в was still pronounced [w] (unlike modern [v]), so it’s easy to imagine how за утра became завтра.
Unless you’re planning to read the The Lay of the Warfare Waged by Igor in the original, you won’t encounter this meaning (at school, we didn’t read it in the original, only translated into modern Russian and Belarusian).
The old meaning is retained in the word за́втрак 'breakfast' (i.e. 'morning meal') and зау́треня 'morning prayer'.
- 1644
Thank you, that's very informative. So it's kinda like Germanic languages with "morrow", "morgon", etc.
Search Google for "Завтра они будут тут". Your question came up as number five in my search results. It occurs in social media, prose literature, and poetry (for example in a translation of "The Yarn of the Loch Achray" by John Masefield: "Сегодня иль завтра они будут тут. Я дом приберу, я постель застелю, Я мясо куплю, я его накормлю, Я беды и радости с ним разделю").
The verb быть has two functions. It can be a normal verb ‘to be, to exist, to be located’, and it can be an auxillary verb.
Here, the verb ‘to be’ is used in its normal function (будут = ‘will be’). Here, будут is the main verb.
In future imperfect construction, the verb ‘to be’ is used as an auxillary verb (будуть читать = ‘will be reading’). In будут читать, читать is the main verb, and будут is the auxillary verb used to create the future form.
