"Give me a bicycle."
Translation:Дайте мне велосипед.
17 Comments
I just realized through this whole exercise ive been leaving out the word "мне", but have been getting it right. Is that necessary? Is it more formal to include it? How do the rules of that work?
468
if there's no other pronoun, it's implied that you mean me/мне. A native speaker should tell if there's any difference in style. I'd say it's pretty much the same
Would someone please explain the difference between "Дайте мне велосипед" and "дай мне велосипед". Both are accepted but is one more polite? more common?
Thanks in advance.
Дайте — formal (polite)/plural Дай — informal
- 1493
Don't we have to add a "please" at the end? Дайте мне велосипед, пожалуйста?
Not for our purposes, apparently. The sentences they are teaching us need to be grammatically correct, but not necessarily "polite requests". The note (before the lesson) says that the Russian "I want some" verbs are softer than in English, but that "please" is still necessary for "polite requests":
I WANT SOME
Russian has two main verb form patterns, which we are going to introduce soon. Unfortunately, the verb «хоте́ть»(to want) is irregular and mixes both. On a brighter note, it is a very common verb, so you'll memorize it eventually.
The other notable thing is that it does not have a strong connotation of 'need', unlike the English verb '"want". Similarly, the Russian verb for "give"(да́ть) is totally OK for polite requests. Just use it with «пожа́луйста».
- 939
It sounds like 'Me give a bicycle'. People would understand you but it's not natural way of saying it.
Мне - dative case, used for an indirect object. Меня - accusative case, used for a direct object. Here, велосипед is the direct object and мне the indirect object - Give the bicycle to me.
I'm confused as to why it isn't Дайте мне велосипеду. Give me a duck is "Дайте мне утку" and Give me your plate please is "Дайте мне вашу тарелку, пожалуйста".
I thought maybe because ducks are animate and bikes are not. The only other difference between the ducks and plates sentence I see is "your, вашу". Would "give me your bike" be "дайте мне вашу велосипеду"...? Or do bikes just never change endings for some reason?
The object being given is in accusative case. The difference is that утка and тарелка are feminine nouns ending in -а, and thus the ending changes to -у in accusative case. Велосипед is masculine and inanimate so the ending doesn't change in accusative.
- 939
Велосипед is a standard word, велик is a colloquial shortened version of велосипед. It's often used in everyday speech just because the standard word is rather long. Just like "refrigerator" and "fridge".
