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- Topic: Russian >
- "С кем твоя сестра?"
29 Comments
If we're going to be prescriptivist about things and not accept colloquial English, "Whom is your sister with?" would not be correct either. Grammar aside, I am almost certain that most English speakers would phrase this as "who is your sister with?"
Yes, both of these "correct" answers are incorrect. "Who is your sister with" or "Who is with your sister" would be how I would normally phrase it. I reported the problem(s).
1658
Technically, under strict English rules of grammar, the "correct" answer would be "With whom is your sister?", but that is so atrociously awkward, nobody would say it that way.
The problem with the colloquial correct answer is that the phrase "Who is" sounds like a subject-verb pair, which is an explanation of why it is used so frequently. Of course, it's not a subject-verb sequence - but it sounds so much like one that many English-speakers are more comfortable with it than "Whom is", which sounds weird.
1) С КЕМ твоя сестра - your sister somebody with anywhere ( with parents or friends etc)
2) Твоя сестра с КЕМ it is need understanding as "who is your sister's boyfriend"
it is not strong rule but such is the context
Yes, I thought this, too. I went against my better judgment and ended up getting it wrong.
"Who(m) is your sister with" is technically not proper grammar, but it's how 99.9+% of English speakers would say it, even those who know it's "wrong". I think accepting it is as a translation is best -- there would be lots of complaining if it wasn't. I wonder if "With whom is your sister?" is accepted...
"Who is your sister with" is proper grammar. This isn't the first century.
Also, if 99.9+% of speakers say something a certain way, then that way is proper.
- 2295
"With whom is your sister?" is accepted (April 28, 2016). :-) Though I think it should really be the default answer (with the others as alternatives, of course). Since the Russian pronoun is not in the nominative case, the appropriate English pronoun is the object pronoun.
If I say "Who's with your sister?", would it mean differently with the one in the suggested translation?
No, no difference in meaning at all.
That said - I think for a while, not sure if it's fixed, they weren't accepting "Who is with your sister" (which is essentially what you wrote).
I'd report it if you got it wrong and you run into it again.
Thanks, yeah I wrote "Who is with your sister" but it wasn't accepted so I thought maybe they have different meanings. Thanks for clarification :)
It seems to me that they do have different meanings: in "who is with your sister" the subject is "who". In "who is your sister with" the subject is "your sister". I think the former would be translated as "кто с твоeй сестрой?".
This is silly - there are a few like this. I answered who is with your sister and it was wrong
- 641
an irrelevant question: "who was your sister with?" would be "С кем была твоя сестра?" correct?
'With whom is your sister?' - spoken slowly with gritted teeth, piercing look - some one is in trouble !
- 458
DL can't cope with all the different but equally correct ways to translate this. First time I did "With whom ..."= accepted. Tried " Who is with your sister "= wrong. Annoying, but that is life when ruled by AI
- 715
"Who is with your sister" is wrong. "Your sister" is with somebody, not the other way round.
And Duolingo is not ruled by AI. The lists of accepted answers are manually maintained by the contributors. If there is a legitimate correct answer that is not currently accepted you can use the report functionality to improve the course.
- 458
Interesting grammatically. "With whom.." is the accurate translation. In practice, if you saw your sister with someone, no one would criticise or misunderstand or be confused if you used the other variants. The only version that might raise eyebrows if used colloquially would be the correct "With whom.."
- 715
I was talking from a meaning perspective rather than grammatically. "Who is your sister with?" should be accepted given general English usage, despite the preposition dangling. But "Who is with your sister?" has a different meaning (albeit slightly different) with a different translation.
