"Мой брат играет в футбольной команде."
Translation:My brother plays on a soccer team.
43 Comments
Just a note. If the student here is not American (.e.g. British), they would say football, not soccer. As far as I know, the US is the only country in the world that says soccer for the game everyone else calls football. BTW, I believe the expression "American Football" is what the Brits use for what Americans call football.
"As far as I know, the US is the only country in the world that says soccer " Not that it is normal for all, but on both British and Australian shows, they do say Soccer from time to time. I believe I have also seen a show in New Zealand where they called it soccer as well.
Yes, we call it soccer in New Zealand, but football is used occasionally, too.
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A lot of non-native English speakers here are writing things that are simply wrong. The translation above, "My brother plays on a soccer team", is American English and would NEVER be used by a native English speaker.
Firstly, the word 'soccer' is almost never used. In my 50 years as a fan I don't think I have ever heard it called soccer.
Secondly, nobody plays 'on' a team. The most common way to say it would be 'for' a team, although under certain circumstances people sometimes say 'in' a team.
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the game is often called soccer in Britain too (eg 'fancy a game of soccer?, i'm going to play soccer'). But we'd rarely say soccer team. Derivation of Association Football, innit
In the Russian sentence, how am I supposed to know that the word команде is a noun and not an adjective?
No full-form adjective looks like that (check the endings ). Basically, all Russian adjectival endings are at least two letters long and always start with a vowel.
The major exception is how "animal-possessives" and the word for "third" behave. They have a /j/-sound after a soft consonant almost everywhere in their endings: третий→третья,третье, третьи, третьего, третью... Normal adjectives have two vowels instead of ь + vowel and just -его, -им instead of -ьего, -ьим.
Anyway... to have a neuter SHORT-form adjective as a predicate here, you would have to actually have the predicate consist of "to be" with an adjective. In reality, "plays" is the verb that acts as a predicate in the sentence.
The fact that he "plays" indicates that he is part of the team on the field and not just on the staff.
What's the difference here between "for a [soccer team]" and "on a [soccer team]"? The first option makes more sense to me in English.
"For" only implies that you're playing something (could be soccer, but not necessarily) to the benefit of the soccer team, whereas "on" would not leave any doubt about the fact you are indeed one of the team's participating players.
To me (non-native, but UK educated), "on a team" sounds more American and "in a team" sounds more British.
As a native British English speaker, I can confirm that for a team is the most usual form.
For example, a news report may announce that "Dier is playing for Spurs now". However all three usages are possible.
in a team is more usual when solo competing ight be possible (for example in gymnastics, which is both a solo and a team event). For a team sport, it sounds slightly odd to me - a slight reaction of 'well, how else do you play football?!'
to say someone plays for a team simply means they are a team member - it doesn't suggest anything about the nature of the relationship, to whose benefit it is etc.
What type of adjective is the word soccer here? How does the adjective change when the noun is in prepositional?
It's a regular adjective with a regular adjectival ending. Lots of nouns in Russian become adjectives by adding -ский, -ний, etc. The adjective is in prepositional case with a feminine ending to match the case and gender of the noun (команда) it is describing.
Looking at the Russian Euro 2016 website, I got the impression that
команда = team &
Состав = squad.
Could any native Russian speakers confirm this please?
Команда = team; состав is the players who are in the team. One could speak of "состав команды" (apparently "squad of the team" is also possible?).
When it comes to international competition, there is a pool of players who are selected to represent their country in the competition. This is that country's squad. From the squad, a team is picked seperately for each match of that tournament.
Is that the same distinction as in Russian?
I have never heard "squad of the team" - I suppose, either one is interested in the sport enough to know the difference, or one doesn't care about the topic enough to want it explained!
Your description suggests that a squad is a different thing after all. Состав is just all the players who are in any team. Other meanings of it include "composition" and "compound", if that helps (link), and also "ingredients" as written on food packages.
I wrote "squad of the team" because I had googled it and got quite a few results, and it appears that the use of "squad" in many of them matches that of "состав" (sort of "composition of the team").
Have followed the google links and worked out what is happening. Strictly speaking, Manchester United is a football club. However, a lot of the supporters of this (or any other football club) will refer to supporting Manchester United as "following their team".
It is in that, looser, sense of the word team that the phrase "squad of the team" makes sense. It is the total pool of players on the payroll of that club (or "team"); not the list of players fielded by the club in a particular match.
As an example, for Euro 2016, the England squad comprises 23 players. (link). Only 11 will play in a team (plus substitutes).
Hmm... Now I’m not even sure that a term analogous to "squad" even exists. There is "сборная [команда]" for a country’s team playing at international matches and comprising players from different clubs (dictionaries translate it as "national team"), but I have no idea if "сборная Англии" can refer to all those 23 players, or only 11, or both. Never been a football fan. :)
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My brother plays soccer in a team. This sentence is different in Russian? Or should it be accepted too?
Well, "My brother plays soccer in a team" in English sounds like there's a version of soccer where people play solo. The Russian for that would be something like "Мой брат играет в футбол с командой" which would express that he plays with a team in soccer as opposed to by himself, but it looks strange to me in both languages.
Solution would be for duolingo to respect the country of the person learning
why "is"? if he is playing just now so ...is playing... otherwise ...brother plays....
When I was learning turkish in Duolingo, always there was someone explaining the endings... The comments in the russian section are bizarre and useless.... If someone could explain the endings and cases in every section would be very useful
Not being a fan of any kind of sport, I must ask: can you play IN a soccer team, or is this bad grammar?
Because adjectives, just like nouns, also decline based on gender, number and case. futbolnaya (футбольная) is the feminine [gender], singular [number] nominative [case] version of the adjective, but in prepositional case (and dative and genitive cases), the feminine singular ending of adjectives is -ой/-ей.
Btw the other countries that call it 'soccer' are not really big footballing nations and are just following America
Soccer is american for gods sake. The rest of the world knows it as football!
