37 Comments
1354
If you google for pictures of 'hat' and for pictures of 'шапка', there will be a bit of overlap, but more importantly, a significant difference. A closer translation for шапка should be cap, while hat is closer to шляпа.
currahee is totally right.
People usually wear шапка only during the cold season.
As a native English speaker, cap has a brim. A cap is a type of hat. Hat is the larger group or general reference. I would never wear a 'cap' in the winter. I would say baseball cap and it would be a summer hat with a brim only over the eyes. Hat is something worn over the head in all seasons because its general, so not specifically with or without a brim.
I cannot completely agree with that. isn't cap more about some particular shapes?
- 1321
Shape is important is Russian, too. I tend to think generally that a шляпа has a brim (fedora, sombero, trilby, cowboy hat) while a шапка does not (stocking caps, those fur hats with ear flaps, Santa's hat) and a baseball hat or newsboy or flatcap would be a кепка.
A native could probably explain any subtleties to this.
I am a Russian native and you are right about шляпа, шапка and кепка. Fancy Women's hats can have different shapes and will be called шляпка. But my question was about English, though -- I meant that шапка does not equal cap.
- 1321
Yes, I'd agree with that, for the most part. But there are some instances and places (probably regional, poetic, esoteric or archaic) where a knit шапка might be called a "cap". The "cap" in "'Twas the night before Christmas" (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171924) is almost certain a шапка.
I wonder where ... in my corners of California and New England a knit cap is a 'beanie'. Bonus points if it has a puff ball on top.
This is a beanie; http://thumbs1.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mmhPeTGpU8QJYhUpLvGrjng.jpg The knit version with a pom-pom is,in Canada, a toque.
- 133
@currahee: Exactly. I inserted the image below in several similar questions. Hopefully cap will be accepted soon.
The word "шапка" is applicable to basically any type of warm headwear except hoods and headscarfs.
- 1526
Why does it have to be "a hat" and not "the hat"? Because it marked me wrong for using "the" here.
- 1100
The sentence is general in nature, and with such general statements, you use the indefinite article "a". It would take a more precise or specific context to make "the" applicable.
Some sentences have a self-contained context which makes use of "the" permissible. This sentence doesn't.
- 1100
Maybe шапка comes from the Hungarian, so you still might not know the origin of the word. :-)
It's ultimately derived from Latin (cappa) which morphed into the old French "chapel" which was then morphed into the old German "schapël"; from there it might have been borrowed either directly from the German or indirectly through the Polish czapka.
It's because of "это." We're not talking about "this hat" but that it is a hat. We'd use эта instead if it meant "this hat."
When would this be said in english? As a native english speaker i can't imagine it being used.
TV game show where you're blindfolded and have to guess what an object is solely by how it feels.
- 1100
When speaking to someone learning English. Just like это шапка is said to Duo users learning Russian.
“Correctly” is wrong for “Правильно"? Since adverb and short adjective are identical, how would I be able to tell them apart? Thanks
I believe in this context in Russian it would still be an adverb, but in English you'd use the adjective "right" or "correct". Regardless, to answer your second question, it would all be based on context. For instance, <Он все правильно сделал> (he did everything right), it would be the adverb - it clarifies how (как) something was done. I can't honestly think of a case where the short-form adjective of правильный would be applied, either...
- 1100
Правильно functions either as an adverb or a predicate adjective.
If it's an adverb, what verb is it modifying? The only verb in the sentence is "is", and saying "This is correctly a hat" is awkward, unnatural, and doesn't make much sense.
As a predicate adjective, the sentence makes a lot more sense: "[This is] correct, it is a hat." (Except it really should be "cap" rather than "hat".)
Same in Hungarian, sapka means hat! Crazy how many words are exactly the same in those two languages.
- 1100
In both the English and the Russian, "it is/это" are omitted. There's also no way of knowing what "it" refers to. Also, most of the time in English, the phrasing would be "You are correct, this is a hat". That introduces ambiguity into the possible translations of Правильно: does it mean "it" (perhaps a statement about the hat) or "I/you/he/she/they" - the person making the statement about the hat.
