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- "Газета лежит на пианино."
40 Comments
The indeclinable words are the loanwords from other languages, like piano and taxi.
1653
This sentence is a great example of how Duo consistently misses opportunities to teach more Russian while giving more information about the words in the exercise. For example:
Instead of the current exercise, Duo could have used: Моя газета лежит на моём пианино - "My newspaper is on my piano" - and included a note that пианино is indeclinable.
Моя газета affirms that газета is feminine nominative singular.
The Prepositional possessive pronoun моём shows пианино is in Prepositional case, due to the locative function of на. (I believe this is correct.)
Jeffrey I seriously have to commend you! I see your posts on every forum entry. As a matter of fact, I am beginning to search for your comments and ever-present wisdom. I cannot begin to count the times, where you've enlightened me in this crazy maze of Russian grammar.
That being said, I agree 100%. Duo is missing a lot of opportunities to teach gramma passively.
I said "there is a newspaper on the piano", and duolingo said it's wrong. I don't understand, duolingo says "lezhit" can mean "there is". So is it really completely wrong to say what I said?
I put the newspaper is laying on tye piano and it was marked wrong, but thats a valid translation. Ffs
Is Лежит really needed in these sentences? It sounds like in Russian you need to say that something is lying or standing somewhere. Can't it be implicit?
- 1983
Yes, it can be implicit.
If you are answering a question "where is the newspaper" then you can omit "лежит", if you are describing objects in a room then it is better not to omitt "лежит". You can omit "лежит" when you describe objects in a room, but this sentence would seem incomplete then
Does the Russian 'lie' have the same two concepts as the English version or do i have to say something like не правда ?
- лежа́ть is a verb: он лежи́т на полу (he is lying on the floor)
- лгать is a verb: он лжёт (he is lying)
- ложь is a noun: не надо лжи! (no more lies!)
- лгун is a noun: он лгун! (he is a liar!)
Are you asking about Russian having a similar problem with lay vs lie in English? If so, this is a problem specific to English regarding the issue of having two similar verbs with similar meanings and sounds, but are often used incorrectly according to their standard definitions. Both lie and лежать are intransitive verbs meaning that the subject is performing the action itself and not to another thing in the sentence. The lay counterpart in Russian would be поставить (if I remember right).
Your memory doesn't betray you (to use a literal translation of a Russian expression.) And the funny thing is that Bulgarians use поставить in some of the cases when we use положить (and in English it is to put: in sentences like "I put the money in the pocket", "I put some sugar in my tea" put translates to Russian положить)
Unless I'm very much mistaken an upright piano is a пианино and a grand piano a пианофорте.
- 308
Just here to say that I got this wrong, not because i didn't understand the Russian, but because even as a native English speaker, i got laying/lying mixed up! I know i should have just put "the newspaper IS on the piano"... how humbling!!!
It makes me laugh figuring a newspaper "sitting" (!!) but if ok to English speakers, ok to me too...
- 711
In proper usage you should always use “lie” unless the subject is “laying” something else. Americans tend to get this wrong but I’m not sure if even they would use “lay” in this context.
I'm American and to say an object is laying (especially if the object is flat) on something or somewhere is common everyday English, at least in my region. This is what it looks like in Russian. It seems duo lingo has accepted colloquial english before, hence my confusion.
I'm in the southeastern United States here (Georgia) and probably more than 80% of people here would incorrectly say "laying" here instead of "lying". In fact, it's so common that I typed the wrong word first and corrected it when I reread what I wrote before clicking the button.
I'll usually catch myself in writing, but in speaking I'm about 50/50 with the correct forms of lie/lay because the incorrect words are used so much here. There are a lot words used incorrectly in the common southern dialect. One example off the top of my head is saying "foot" instead of "feet" when measuring something with a tape measure or estimating distance to something that isn't close but isn't far enough to use yards instead of feet. (ex. "I'd say that tree is about 20 foot tall and 50 foot away.")
- 290
Foot is used in UK English as well if followed by e.g. tall or away. So - 'it measures 3 feet' or just 'it's 3 feet' but 'it's 3 foot long'. Curious the inconsistencies in different languages!
Газета лежит на пианино. / the newspaper is on the piano : my answer the newspaper lays on the piano should be accepted!
