- Forum >
- Topic: Russian >
- "Мама идёт в магазин с девочк…
"Мама идёт в магазин с девочкой и с мальчиком."
Translation:Mom goes to the store with a girl and with a boy.
19 Comments
555
Yes, it works with "the" because it implies that the girl and the boy are often referred to collectively (e.g. they are siblings, or in a relationship). However, it wouldn't work as well with "a boy and girl", because it is indefinite.
Thank you. I didn't try it the other way so I wasn't sure if it was accepted or not.
I don't even know how they could go about changing this, but this is the one thing about the DL alternate answers. You can't ever tell if it's:
- The most common usage
- Will be generally understood (but will make you sound like a 5 year old)
- Will make you sound like the kind of person that would wear a tuxedo to a soccer match.
I'm concerned about this translation: 'Mom goes' for me implies that she goes habitually (every week, etc); for that you'd need ходить (Мама ходит...). Идёт definitely means that she's on her way there - it's motion in one direction, which I'd usually express with 'She's going to.../she's on her way to..."
Wouldn't ходит по магазинам be better if you want "goes shopping"?
FWIW, both Yandex and Google translate the Russian as "Mom goes to the store with a girl and a boy." And they translate Duolingo's English sentence to Russian as "Мама ходит по магазинам с девочкой и мальчиком." That's also the expression I've heard for "go shopping". Can a native speaker comment?