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In this sentence you need to use the genitive (кни́ги) instead of the accusative (кни́гу). And I think it is because there is no verb acting directly on the object (кни́га), so no reason to use accusative here.
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I haven't learned genetive yet myself, but i believe it's always genetive after нет?
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But why is book in genitive? Is it not the subject, or is the table the subject?
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no, but it is negation, this example shows us that even though its accusative, it is negation which refers to genitive
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На столе ‧ Russian uses three prepositions with the prepositional case: в, во - in, at на - on ‧ www.auburn.edu/forlang/russian/tutorials/0034.html ‧
нет книги ‧ Genitive Case following [ Нет ] portrays Non-existence ‧ Absence ‧ Negation ‧ [ There is none of _ + Gen ][]wikitranslate.org/wiki/Category:Russian_genitive_case_for_negation ‧
Negation - To say something is there, generally use the Nominative case. If it isn't there, use нет followed by the Genitive. ‧ quizlet.com/45395385/russian-casesuses-flash-cards/ ‧
Кни́га ‧ Номин ‧ Родит ‧ Датель ‧ Виналь ‧ Инстру ‧ Предло
Кни́га ‧ ‧ Nomin ‧ Genit ‧ Dative ‧ Accus ‧ Instr ‧ Prepos
Singul ‧ книга ‧ книги ‧ книге ‧ книгу ‧ книгой ‧ книге
Plural ‧ книги ‧ книг ‧ книгам ‧ книги ‧ книгами ‧ книгах
cooljugator.com/run/книга
Singular ‧ стол ‧ стола ‧ столу ‧ стол ‧ столом ‧ столе
Plural ‧ столы ‧ столов ‧ столам ‧ столы ‧ столами ‧ столах
cooljugator.com/run/стол
Паде́ж ‧ Падежи́
Case ‧ Cases
Номинационный ‧ Родительский ‧ Дательный ‧ Винальный ‧ Инструментальный ‧ Предлог
Nominative ‧ Genitive ‧ Dative ‧ Accusative ‧ Instrumental ‧ Prepositional
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Книг. So for books to be plural here, it would be: На столе нет книг.
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While that would be a more common sentence, it's a bit different in Russian - на столе нет книг, because if you're saying "books" you need the plural form.
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This is really a question of idiom alone. In the US, we don't say "there is no book on the table" except in really unusual circumstances. When we refer to the fact that there are no books on a table - not one, not ten, not one hundred - none at all - we say "There are no books on the table." It's completely idiomatic.
For the same reason, we don't say, "By me exists a book" we say "I have a book". Duo has no problem translating the Russian idiomatically, and shouldn't have the same problem here.
As it turns out, there are two Russian phrases you can use to translate "There are no books on the table". There are quite a few examples among various languages where plurals in one language are translated to singular in others. raisin in French: "Grapes". You get it wrong if you say "grape".
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for all my life i knew "the book IS on the table". And now this...
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А если разговор идет о конкретной книге, я могу сказать: "There is no the book on the table."?
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Love Duolingo community, even with it's pair of numbskulls (like myself), there is always an explanation for everything and you get it just a few click/touches away on the discussions instead of paying who knows how much to a private teacher.
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Reported, but reporting is useless in the Russian course. Not a SINGLE report accepted yet.
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Please, native speakers, correct me if I am wrong but I think "desk" is more often translated as "парта"
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After 'г', 'и' is used rather than 'ы'. See the spelling rules in the Tips & Notes here: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/ru/Plurals
Also note the first vowel: "книги".
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Why genitive? I taught there should stand nominative (именительный) because the questions are "кто на столе?" and "что на столе?"
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Wow, being a British English speaker educated in the '70s and' 80s the words about grammar need translating to me as much of the Russian. Obviously genitive and accusative are not words ever used in ordinary speech
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Isn't = singular, books = plural. The sentence says "there is no book"; book = singular.
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No, книги in this case is genitive singular. The form just happens to be the same as the nominative plural. See the discussion above.
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That would be "книга нет на столе". The sentence in this exercise means the book doesn't exist - notice that after нет it uses the genitive for "book". Take it as "the book doesn't exist (нет, "не ест") on the table", or "on the table the book doesn't exist/no book exists". Aside from the case used, this construction places the emphasis on the book, since the word is placed last. If you mean to emphasize the fact that you are looking for a specific book that is not on the table, but is somewhere else (and exists), you have to place the emphasis on "the table". The book (that exists, but somewhere else, so it's nominative) is not on the table = книга нет на столе.
I'm not a native speaker, this is only according to what I have studied. Maybe some moderator can confirm or explain better than me.
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Нет. "Нет книги на столе" ещё пойдёт. Коряво, но пойдёт. Например, каа ответ на вопрос "На столе есть книга?".
And once upon a time книги meants books, plural. Today it doesn't. Sure, I believe that. Total lies.
