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- Topic: Russian >
- "Север — там."
19 Comments
Unless you are pointing at the north pole. "North is there" is impossible. A sensible translation would be "North is that way" since North is a direction, not a place.
I agree - "North is there" is not a sentence I can imagine any English speaker ever saying.
1796
Your sentence is more complete. It would be in Russian - "север в той стороне" / "север в том направлении" - "north is that way" / "north is in that direction". But I think these are different sentences with the similar meaning.
That was my first instinct too, but I went for the simpler translation, though I would tend to agree that if I was looking at a map trying to find my way and pointing I'd say north is that way, south is that way etc. Maybe if I was just looking at a map at home, or looking at an atlas, I might just say north is there, then again it's obvious where north is on a map :D Ok, I'm rambling now but I do agree that "north is that way" could work here
To the people arguing, you're missing the context where someone would show the north of some place on a map
The audio on this one is very difficult. I listened multiple times and could not make out север
There's no way I would ever say "There's the north." "The north" is referring to a specific place, like Northern Ireland, or the Union during the Civil War, or the region in the Lord of the Rings. I would say "There's north" if I'm in the middle of the woods with a compass and a paper map, and I need to point north to figure out where we're going. If I'm going to refer to a place, I'm going to refer to it by its name, not as "The North."
- 1153
Sounds like the place name Siberia would come from the direction "sever" север, but the etymologies in the Russian wiktionary (based on Max Vasmer) say the two words come from different sources.
Can a native Russian comment on the similarity of Siberia and север (sever)?
For my Russian ear there is no any similarity between the words "север" and "Сибирь". By the way, in relation to the European part of Russia Siberia is located in the East.
I looked up the etymology of each and they seem to come from different language families although the similarity is uncanny. Alternatively, Yugoslavia did come from юг (Land of the Southern Slavs).
