"Тим, что это за рыба?"
Translation:Tim, what kind of fish is this?
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Can someone elaborate on why "Tim, what fish is that?" Is incorrect? ^^ thank you.
It's not technically incorrect since you could say "fish" to mean "type of fish"; however if they accepted that answer people would be marked correct for misinterpreting it to mean "what (individual) fish".
Since no one answered so far, I looked it up myself and it turns out: although за usually requires prepositional case or accusative, in this context (что это за ...) it is in fact followed by nominative. Czech and Slovak require accusative for this construction, but in Polish it is the same as in Russian and they also have nominative there. (https://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/7804/nominative-after-%D1%87%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%B7%D0%B0)
Thank you, that finally makes sense. In other occurrences of что э́то за, the Nominative passed unnoticed because of being in masculine or neutral words, whose Inanimate Accusative is identical to Nominative.
Perhaps someone can explain this sentence? My understanding is that за usually means "for". So is "что это за" simply a common idiom meaning "what kind of ... is this"?
Like "потому что" meaning "because" (porque), while потому by itself is "therefore" (por lo tanto). They are related, but the combination works quite differently like a whole new expression.
Actually, it kind of makes sense, in this case; "what is this for a fish" gets across, somewhat obliquely, the same idea if you ask me.
My answer of Tim, what kind of a fish is this? was rejected. Both should be correct but my answer is more likely in the USA. The meaning is slightly different. If you are holding a fish you just caught my question would be used 99% of the time. If there is a cooked fish on your plate, the given question is better.
While not strictly wrong, it's an unnatural sentence structure. "What kind of fish is this" and "what kind is this fish" are the only two I can think of offhand that "should" work, and pardon the expression, but even the second is a bit fishy...
I've heard it. I think that's perfectly acceptable. It's uncommon, but not incorrect.
Что это за рыба? Considering that the 1st 3 words mean 'what is this', then whether you write "What type" or "What kind" (both colloquial English) IS irrelevant!
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Native English speaker (Australian/New Zealand) here." Tim, what is this kind of fish"sounds fine in English to me,
