34 Comments
i wish when you moused over the word it showed you what case it was in
"X is Y" requires nominative for both X & Y - there are no objects of any actions here. So in this particular case you should actually recognise this pattern (and btw, this rule is identical in German, since you seem to be learning it as well).
It’s better to try to learn to recognise these patterns. but It would be easier to learn such patterns if they were actually written in the mouse over thing.
Is года pronounced гóда or годá?
The audio for the entire sentence claims one thing, whereas when I click the word alone it says another thing. Confusing.
Гóда.
Годá would be the archaic or poetic way of saying гóды, the plural nominative or accusative of год.
Yes, that sounds better too. Thanks.
I have encountered several examples of when the audio is different depending on if you click only the word versus the whole sentence. Usually a o/a mixup.
I use duolingo on more than one device; the voice is different on each. There are some words pronounced quite diferently. I suspect that on my older android it's using a lower quality text-to-speech engine, because thats what it sounds like. I do not know this to be true, though.
should the adjetive not be feminie as врема is feminie, or is it not ?
Shouldn't there be a "the" between time and year in the English translation? It sounds wrong to me, but i am not a native speaker.
Either is correct, and frequency probably depends on where one grew up. I wrote "time of the year" but could easily have chosen otherwise.
732
i typed time of the year because in a previous phrase Duo marked me incorrect for learving out the "the" when talking about in the city (в городе). You know, being marked incorrect for "omitting" a "non existent" word (hmmm ???????)
Steve448292, it may be frustrating, but I'd say native speakers would almost never use "in city". It is always "in the city" "to the city". So Duo is correct in marking you wrong there, learn from it.
- 732
Thanks Tom, And yes, I do learn from every phrase that Duo give us to practise on. )) It's good to know what native russian speakers think, but my point is........ this is a "non existent word. It's like asking someone to prove that something does not exist. But I take your point, this is ALL about working out how to actually "think" like a russian speaker ))) it is no use being a walking talking dictionary or text book. Much more appealing to be a normal human ))) with normal russian phrases )))) I am sorry if my sarcasm bit. I was trying to make a point of "looking for a ""nothing"" word ' )))
I definitely agree with you about "in the city" (albeit I'm not a native speaker, just a long-time practitioner). The funny thing is that "in town" is perfectly OK but "in city" sounds borderline wrong to my ear.
Agreed (native speaker). "In town" is an informal set expression, "in city" isn't.
No in English we say "time of year" more than "time of the year", although the second is not exactly wrong.
- 528
I've been told that in standard everyday speech, they are indistinguishable because unstressed vowels get reduced (like "о" and "а" that become the same sound when unstressed).
When someone pronounces a word slowly for some reason however (maybe for example when asked "What did you say?"), then all vowels are pronounced differently, as in stressed position. Apparently native speakers make this "pronunciation shift" automatically, but still "think" unconsciously as if they were pronouncing definite "о" or "а". Except for some Russian dialects that always pronounce "о" as "о".
"о" & "а" should certainly be indistinguishable here: unless they are stressed or, possibly, at the end of the word, "о" & "а" are pronounced the same in standard Russian (and in the latter case, the difference is quite subtle, so in the first approximation you can ignore it as well). As for unstressed "е" vs "я" - I think I can hear the difference, but once again it's subtle. The context should take care of this.
"Season of the year" is a tautology. It's either "season" or "time of the year".
And in any case, it should be "... of the year": English uses the definite article when describing parts os something: a day of the week (any week!), first Monday of the month (any month!) etc.
Its funny how they spelled favorite. They spelled it as favourite, where as I would spell it favorite!
It's the difference between the US vs the rest of the English-speaking world. "Favorite" is the American spelling.
