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- "Потом мы легли спать."
56 Comments
No, лежать is the imperfective verb. Легли is the past tense of the perfective form лечь.
Isn't лечь the perfective of ложиться? I'm not sure, but I sort of understand лежать as meaning "to lie, be in a recumbent position, be situated," whereas ложиться would be "to lie down, go to bed, go to sleep" - in other words, a change of position.
Interesting, I looked it up and it seems to be used as the perfective of both: http://masterrussian.com/verbs/lezhat_lech.htm
http://masterrussian.com/verbs/lozhitsa_lech.htm
1502
Я ещё начинал учиться когда я это написал.
What I meant to say is that all those words translate to "lie" in English: "Лежать", "лечь", "ложь", "ложиться".
- 1660
One perfective form for two (or more?) imperfectives, one a reflexive, the other not. But how do you know which form the perfective is the perfective of?
I was thrown for a bit, because the sentence structure suggested that a reflexive verb was called for - but now I learn that the verb is the perfective of a reflexive verb - but does that make it reflexive also? And if so, how do you tell?
Aha! I thought it looked odd - thank you, have a lingot!
PS Is the singular form лег, or what?
Thanks! By the way, a useful tip for in future: Enter the word in question here to get all the forms of it. http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/morphque.cgi?flags=endnnnnp
e.g. entering легли will give you this: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/morph.cgi?flags=endnnnnproot=configword=%EB%E5%E3%EB%E8
Don't capitalise and use е instead of ё. It's a bit picky.
Edit: and that second link (looks like you'll have to copy + paste) will answer the question you just added :-) By the way, stress is marked with ' and ё with '' so it's лёг not лег.
Edit again: that second link doesn't seem to be working, but you can enter легли in the first one to get the same result.
Outstanding, thanks! Take a lingot. (I tried to give two, but it wouldn't do it.)
I reckon "Потом" means "then" in a succession, e.g "and after that", while "тогда" refers to a passed time : "at that time", "back then"... I ate, then I went to bed : "Потом" / I was a very fine lad then : "тогда"
I edit my message to add that "тогда" is also the word used when "then" means "in this case" : if you do not want to eat your food, then i'll eat it
I think "Went to sleep" would translate to пошли спать. Легли спать would be "lied down to sleep"
The stress on the word "potom" shall be on the second syllable. Am I correct?
Yes.
пОтом - with sweat (instrumental case of пот)
потОм - afterwards (adverb)
I was going to make a post on the emphasis, which is way off, way too often. Thanks comrade!
This guy's Russian always sounds off. When he says, "потом" he stresses the first syllable so it sounds like potem (with a long 'o'), while I had always heard it pahtome (long 'o' silent 'e') with the stress on the last syllable.
Just out of curiosity, could this also be used to mean something sexual? In English, it could.
"Afterward" and "Afterwards" are both proper English, and mean the same thing.
Would I be nitpicking to complain that "легли" wasn't introduced before asking us to write it down from the robot speech? At the last moment before giving up, I recognized the figure of speech, figured it out and confirmed with Google ...
In english there is a difference between "later" and 'then". "Then" usually means right away after
I thought it was later too. A russian speaker told me it means later not then.
It doesn't really mean "later". Потом is used when saying, for example, something happened, and then something else happened, the one came right after the other. "Later" just implies that something happened at some unspecified point in the future, it could be hours or days later and all sorts of things happened in between. You wouldn't use потом in that case. So hankerson12's translation above is inaccurate.
"Lied" means "didn't tell the truth." The simple past tense of "lie" (down to sleep) is "lay" (down to sleep).
Does мы легли спать always involve a bed? Can't you do this when out camping?
I put *we lay down to sleep" (with the old prayer in mind), to avoid assuming a location not specified in the original - but apparently that is wrong!
- 505
No, it doesn't necessarily involve a bed. "Lay down to sleep" must have been simply overlooked. (It's not something that immediately comes to mind as a translation of "лечь спать" — to me at least, even though it's the literal translation. We learners are just so used to "going to bed"...)
- 1660
In American English, we have a children's prayer which begins, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep"
I think it is "после того, как мы идём спать" in Russian
may be "then we go to bed" - "тогда/затем мы идём спать" or
"then we went to bed" looks like "тогда/затем мы легли спать" for me
- 1240
Некорректно звучит аудио "пОтом". Должно быть "потОм". Поэтому два раза подряд послал сообщение о некорректном аудио.
потОм = пОсле = впослЕдствии = afterwards
пОтом = творительный падеж существительного (Instrumental case of the none) "пот" = "perspiration" or "sweat".
Тяжело работал и весь покрылся пОтом = Worked hard and got covered by sweat.
A very poor sentence but "we then went to bed" makes more since even though it is also an incomplete sentence.
The words "afterwards", "then" and "and then" are interchangeable (the same,similar, alike, synonymous), aren't they? At least for spoken English, right? "And then we went to sleep. Afterwards we went to bed." They are construed to have the same meaning. Is that correct?
- 148
a strange oddity that the selfreflexive ложиться should pair with the not selfreflexive лечь...
I think it would be more accurately and correctly translated as "Afterwards we went/laid to sleep."
