"Ты когда-нибудь был в Китае?"
Translation:Have you ever been to China?
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1123
TL;DR: from the name Khitan, a Mongolian tribe which once ruled Northern China; got to Russian from Mandarin via a Turkic language.
Китай: From Old East Slavic Китай (Kitaй), from a Turkic source; compare Kazakh Қытай (Qıtay), Kyrgyz Кытай (Kıtay), Uzbek Xitoy, Turkmen Hytaý; from Old Turkic Qïtaǰ “Khitan”, from Mandarin 契丹 (Qìdān, “Khitan”), the Chinese name of a Mongolian tribe who ruled Manchuria from 907–1115 CE.
Cognate with Spanish Catay and English Cathay.
- 471
It originally came from a Sanskrit name for China, which was borrowed through Persian, Portuguese, and eventually into English.
Useful information regarding нибудь (taken from wiktionary):
The particle -нибудь (-nibudʹ) imparts a sense of indefiniteness similar to English any or ever. The form когда-нибудь is usually associated with questions and negatives (like anytime), while когда́-то (kogdá-to) is associated with affirmatives (like sometime).
I put down ,"Have you ever visited China" and got it wrong. Is there something I missed?
I wouldn't expect it to work, to be honest, while the meaning is the same, you're using words that are totally different.
- 950
I had this sentence as a speaking exercise and it repeatedly refused to understand когда and Китае no matter how hard I stressed it... I have the same problem whenever numbers higher than 1 come up in speaking exercises. Does anyone else have this problem?
