"Является ли враг моего врага моим другом?"
Translation:Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?
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First time this sentence came up I misread враг as врач and thought it was a really strange sentence... d'oh!
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In my mother tongue (Slovak, yet another Slavic language) the word "vrah" (very similar to the Russian "враг" phonetically) means "a murderer" so you can imagine my confusion...
"является" means "is", which is used in order to replace "это", and to make a sentence sound more formal.
Exactly! This is the best sentence (question) in this section, the rest is very difficult, boring and generally a complete nightmare.
is the "моим другом" declined this way because it is referring to a state of being, similar to when we talk about someone "becoming" a lawyer etc.?
Well, it is just a fixed usage that "является" should be followed by words in their instrumental case (i.e. моим другом)
Является means is? I thought there wasn't really a word for that in Russian??
I think "является" literally means something like "expresses itself as".
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Oh, but there is. Just not in common use. Является sounds more grand and formal than just using это.
I don t quite understand why my friend calls for the instrumental... Is that the ябльятся thing?
Yes, являться is used with an Instrumental complement:
- Он является моим другом
- Программирование не являлось проблемой.
- Эта проблема не является важной.
Jim is my enemy. But it turns out that Jim is also his own worst enemy. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So Jim is actually my friend. But, because he is his own worst enemy, the enemy of my friend is my enemy, so actually, Jim is my enemy. But...
