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- "Мои кошки пьют молоко."
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Kittens drink milk. Cats do not. Cats are lactose intolerant as adults. /pendant
So what! In the Portuguese lessons there are birds that read the newspaper and dogs that write books. This is a language course, not a course about cats.
I mean, I'd still worry if one of the sentences were about a dog eating chocolate, as if it were a normal thing.
LOL; in Latin lessons there are drunk and murderous parrots. It seems there is a lot of artistic licence.
They might be intolerant to it/shouldn't drink it, but in my experience it doesn't stop them drinking it.
I’m pretty sure in my Granny’s village most villagers gave their cats milk, and well, they drank it.
Kittens would be «котя́та» (singular is котёнок; it has an irregular plural), although I doubt this word is introduced in the course.
Adult cats will drink milk when offered, particularly if there's no obvious choice (like just water instead). That doesn't mean it is particularly good for them.
As a fellow pedant, may I point out, that you have spelt pedant incorrectly.
Why is it пьют? In the previous lessons it said that пьёт has the same meaning as пьют. Is this another rule im unaware of?
Verbs in present and future tense change to show who is doing the action. There's a
- 1st person singular (я пью 'I drink') and
- 1st person plural forms (мы пьём 'we drink'),
- 2nd person singular/informal (ты пьёшь 'you drink') and
- 2nd person plural/formal forms (вы пьёте 'you drink'), and
- 3rd person singular (она пьёт 'she drinks', also used with any singular nouns) and
- 3rd person plural forms (они пьют 'they drink', also used with any plural noun).
English only distinguishes 3rd person singular (a cat drinks vs. I/you/we/they drink), but Russian distinguishes 6 forms.
You can see the forms of any verb in the Wiktionary. Don't worry if these forms seem overwhelming, most of them follow more-or-less regular patterns and you'll learn them in this course.
Most adult animals can not drink milk. (They can't handle lactose), So, milk is really not good for them. Cats included.
Did you know, that the reason a lot of humans can drink milk is due to a mutation? Those who are "lactose intolerant" do not have that mutation. I learned this in my one collage class. We learned that most animals produce a kind of enzyme called "Lactase" very early on in youth, but stop producing it into adulthood. And Lactase, is what allows one to break down Lactose. The mutation that humans can have, is one where the body keeps producing the enzyme, well into adulthood, thus, allowing them to drink milk. (Just something Interesting that I thought I'd share)
Is there any indication of when the sentence shows the difference between the two statements : the cat drinks , and, the cat is drinking?
Would "the milk" be wrong in this context? If so, how would Russian make the distinction?
Моё and мое are two ways to spell the same thing. Dots over ё are optional.
(Yes, when they are left out, you need to guess where е is pronounced ye and where it’s pronounced yo. Which is pretty difficult for the words you don’t know, especially for names. Sometimes people guess incorrectly: Хрущёв is rendered Khrushchev, even though he’s actually Khrushchyov.)
Yes.
It’s a neuter nouns. For neuter nouns, accusative case always looks same as nominative. (Just like in Latin.)
