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- Topic: Russian >
- "Ты идёшь домой, да?"
32 Comments
No, I think they are trying to translate it as a "tag question".
In English, the tag question (added onto a positive phrase) has to include a negative marker.
"Yes" does not include a negation marker.
Tag questions (or question tags) turn a statement into a question. They are often used for checking information that we think we know is true. Usually if the main clause is positive, the question tag is negative, and if the main clause is negative, it's positive. For example: It's cold (positive), isn't it (negative)? Tag Questions - Perfect English Grammar www.perfect-english-grammar.com/tag-questions.html
English is more flexible than that. "You're from Russia, right?" is an example of a positive main sentence, with a positive tag. While formal English would say the "correct" form is "You're from Russia, aren't you?", the less formal question using "right" instead of "aren't you" is just fine. Using "yes" instead of "right" doesn't change that conclusion.
108
Except: "yes" can also be a tag question, so this translation is fine.
I see what you mean by the negative marker thing, but what is actually happening here is "yes" (or "right", which is a little more common — and was just accepted for me) is being used as a contraction for "is this correct?", and this is a neutral version that can be used with positive OR negative phrases. Other examples include "correct" or the colloquial "ay", which has recently become very common in informal speech.
- 108
I'm not sure. It's used in New Zealand and Australia a lot, at least. (I definitely wouldn't expect it to be accepted by Duolingo! It's very informal.)
EDIT: I had a look around online, and it seems that "ay"/"aye" is exclusively NZ/AUS. Whoops.
Ay, or "ey" comes from "hey". The "hey" is a neutral prompt, and super informal/casual speech
Aye is from the UK and Ireland as well, all english commonwealth counties use the word 'aye' in colloquialisms and it is always meant as affirmative
pronounced 'ai' as in 'Kai'
To me, this sounds like a non-native translation or perhaps from a region I am not familiar with.
Almost. It is a statement, not a question, but the confirmation "right" converts the statement into a question.
Your version is already a question, so it doesn't take "right" at the end. You could phrase it as two questions. "Are you going home? Am I right?" but that would be a different translation.
I don't like, in Tap-to-select, when Duolingo treats "n't" as a separate word. This is incorrect! "Are not" are two separate words, but "aren't" is one word.
Could someone clarify домой here? it looks like it's not the dative for дом. Am I right in thinking its an adverb being used in this case that means homeward?
I am a beginner in Russian, but I have read on another discussion thread that домой does literally translate as homewards. So I believe your assumption is correct.
Yes it's the directional "home" домой as opposed to the locative
"[at] home," дома
Where are you going? Куда?---домОЙ...where from?откуда?----из домА, где?---домА (Where are you?)
you are going home, are you? to me sounds less stilited in English than are you not? or simply are you going home? This course seems to me very good at accepting different nuances, and maybe there's a nuance here I haven't grasped..
I don't tend to worry on these results if I don't hit a literal translation to sentences that aren't phrased in the way English tends to be. A number of other languages have that 'this is happening, yes?' construction too. I'd be just interested in the way the question can be posed in Russian. However, in English nuances, I'd probably expect to hear 'you're going home, are you?'if I was unsure that where they were going was actually home, and ''you're going home, aren't you?' as a confirmation that home is really where they were going to. The latter seems to fit best with the Da? emphasis.
- 108
Yes, because this is incorrect English grammar.
You can only use the "yes?" at the end if the previous part of the sentence is a STATEMENT, not a question. va-diim explains this elsewhere in this comment section, in answer to RHEE758687's comment.
The correct way to say this is "you are going home, yes?", which should be accepted.
No, it sounds like a foreigner speaking English. A better translation would be, "You're going home, right?"
- 108
Another alternative that would sound better in English would be "you go home, don't you?". Simple present can still be used here, in rare cases.
