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- Topic: Russian >
- "Я его ждала."
37 Comments
166
Translate, please: "Я ждал тебя (я все еще тут и говорю тебе это)", "Я его ждала (но уже не жду и говорю об этом кому-то)". "Я его ждала" - "I have waited for him" - Is it not correct? Thanks a lot.
- 2065
You are correct.
I have waited for him - я ждала его (какое-то время, вплоть до настоящего момента и возможно буду продолжать ждать). Почему-то, однако этот вариант не внесен в список правильных ответов.
why i say я его ждала but also я ждала тебя, when the pronoun is before the verb and when after?
the cool thing about russian is that you can play with the word order and it still makes sense. so in ur case, if im correct, u could say я его/тебя ждала and я ждала его/тебя. the subject, the verb and the object are still crystal clear
Why is "Ждала" in the feminine form when there are no feminine nouns in this sentence? Thanks
Past tenses change not only according to grammatical gender but also to actual gender.
If the subject is female, it's takes the feminine form. If the subject is male, it takes the masculine form.
Either one should work here since there's nothing that tells us the gender of the person speaking.
Oh alright, I think I understand. So the feminine "Ждала" here implies that the person speaking is a woman.
- 540
And of course for me the voice was masculine. But this has been a problem with all the past tense exercises. I think Duo just randomly selects the male or female voice.
It's fine - but uncommon. In the UK and most parts of the US "to wait on someone" is understood as "to serve someone". (I think the Russian term for that is "обслу́живать" but I'm not sure.) However, in some parts of the U.S. (mainly in the South) "wait on" is commonly used as a synonym for "wait for" so I'd argue it's an acceptable translation (at least in Texas...). Although, personally, I wouldn't use "wait on" in place of "wait for". "Wait for" is less ambiguous and much more widely used.
- 1733
In another exercise - Подожди автобуса - there was a lot of comment about this question. What I gathered from the comments was that, with ждать / подождать, inanimate things waited for are usually Genitive, animate beings are usually Accusative, vehicles can be either. Messages are usually Genitive, unless they are definite, e.g., about to arrive.
егo can be either Accusative or Genitive, so there's no way of telling from this exercise what it is, but the comments indicate that it's Accusative.
- 521
Absolutely; that's how it "его" sounds wherever it appears I think (it's also an ending for adjectives in the genitive case; more commonly the adjective ending is "ого," where the same thing happens).
So, why did it not allow my "Я его ждал" if it's in the masculine? It said "nope, has to be ждала"
- 521
I assume (given that you're posting in this discussion) that you got this sentence as a listening / transcription exercise, in which case what was read to you is "Я его ждала," and that's what you have to type.
Nope, it was multiple choice. Had both available, I went for the masculine, told me I was wrong.
- 1733
"for him"
In English, "waiting on" someone means to act as an attendant, and to perform tasks for that person. At restaurants, the staff "waits on" customers - thus they are called "waiters". A restaurant is the usual place where a person is "waited on", but that service can extend to other places and activities. There is an English idiom, "I waited on him/her hand and foot", which means "I performed a lot of services for him/her, at his/her command and orders"
- 305
Depending on where you are from, some folks in America say they are "waiting on" someone to indicate they are waiting for someone. It may not be widely used, but I have heard many people use this in my life. So for some, that could indeed be an accurate translation of colloquial speech.
- 1733
This translation indicates to me that there is no Russian equivalent of the present or past perfect tenses found in Romance languages - compound verbs requiring an auxiliary ("to have" or "to be" + past participle), as in "I have gone" or "I have been going".
Я русский но не могу это перевести на английский без ошибок, я думаю перевод не правильный.
From what I have seen, because you are using here a perfective verb (хдать), it implies that the action of waiting was continuous, I think.
- 521
I waited = Я (подо)ждал(а). I'll defer to native speakers on what the perfective/imperfective contrast means here.
