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- "На столе нет книги."
60 Comments
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.
I haven't learned genetive yet myself, but i believe it's always genetive after нет?
But why is book in genitive? Is it not the subject, or is the table the subject?
no, but it is negation, this example shows us that even though its accusative, it is negation which refers to genitive
There is actually no subject in this sentence. In english : there is no book on the table. In russian "there is" could be omitted. So the sentence said: No book on the table. На столе нет книги. I hope it helps.
Книга needs to be in genitive = книги, so book (singular). However, learning a language by literal translation is a very risky thing.
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.
1542
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".
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.
I wrote "на столе книг нет"... Can someone please explain to me why this is wrong?
Why is this not "The(A) book is not on the table?" Where do they get " There is ... "?
We use genitive case after" нет" and here is the rule in feminine noun we change "a"--to---"ы". ....but if the feminine noun ends in hard (к,г,х,ж,ш) we will change it to" и " instead of" ы"
I got the question incorrect because I used the wrong there. English is my first language and I feel ashamed...
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".
Why genitive? I taught there should stand nominative (именительный) because the questions are "кто на столе?" and "что на столе?"
- 998
No, книги in this case is genitive singular. The form just happens to be the same as the nominative plural. See the discussion above.
It would be nice if they didn't disable the button that plays the speech after you have recorded your own. Sometimes it doesn't 'hear'all of my words and I would like to hear the Native say the phrase a few more times before i move on. 'Thanks' to the Mod that relays this. )
- 879
I'm not a native speaker, but that sounds like a reasonable translation considering the "official" translation
Hi, I'm getting чтоле , instead of столе, whats the reason for this...any ideas?
Is it just me or is the "о" in "столе" unstressed? It sounds more like an "а" sound in this example.
- 604
Actually, the best translation of нет is "there is/are no" as нет derives from не есть.
