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- "Скоро нам надо будет ехать д…
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Is there any reason why DL should not also accept "Soon we will need to be going home" ? I think it is a more literal translation, and it is a very common English construction where I live.
The future continuous is currently not accepted as the translation for these types of phrases. I'm sure the moderators will fix it sometime later
"Нам" means "to/for us" and "надо будет" literally means "necessary [it] will be". However you say "we will need" in Russian, it will be structured as an impersonal sentence - something like "It will be necessary for us to...".
No, it isn't, although a better way to say this in Russian will be "Скоро нам надо будет возвращаться домой"
Why is the imperfective used in this sentence? You aren't going to repeat the action, and going back home is a unidirectional thing, so why not "Скоро нам надо вернуть домой" ? I don't really follow the logic behind this.
"вернуть" requires an object as in "to return the book to the library". The verb for "go back" is either "вернуться" (perfective) or "возвращаться" (imperfective). You can say, "нам надо вернуться домой" (we need to go back home) or "нам надо возвращаться домой" (we need to go back home now / we need to start going back home), but if you start the sentence with "Скоро" (soon), you will be talking about the near future rather than the moment of speech, so you will have to say "надо будет", which phrase can only be followed by an imperfective verb. Hence the translation "Скоро нам надо будет возвращаться домой". "Нам надо скоро вернуться домой" is also a valid sentence, but it has a different meaning: "We need to be back home soon".
"вернуть" requires an object as in "to return the book to the library".
The verb for "go back" is either "вернуться" (perfective) or "возвращаться" (imperfective). [Reflexive, i.e., "return ourselves."]
You can say, "нам надо вернуться домой" (we need to go back home) or "нам надо возвращаться домой" (we need to go back home now / we need to start going back home.)
But if you start the sentence with "Скоро" (soon), you will be talking about [in] the near future rather than [at] the moment of speech, so you will have to say "надо будет". "Будет" can only be followed by an imperfective verb. Hence the translation "Скоро нам надо будет возвращаться домой".
"Нам надо скоро вернуться домой" is also a valid sentence, but it has a different meaning: "We need to be back home soon".
[I edited your post for more clarity. I hope you don't mind. Please tell me if I screwed anything up, so I can delete it.]
Спасибо большое. Now I get it...and writing вернуть was dumb, I knew it's reflexive in those sentences.
Do we always use imperfective verbs after "надо будет"? I am a bit confused since I think when you say "we need to do something", it's often or at least it could be about some one-time action.
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would the word order "Скоро нам будет надо ехать домой" be considered strange or wrong?
It is just very odd. Having looked through the corpus examples I can say that надо будет is about 50–100 times more common. Most examples of было надо or будет надо are when надо expresses the lack of something or necessity of some thing or favour, i.e. when a person is "in need". \
Strangely enough, it does not sound immediately wrong but, apparently, native speakers automatically prefer the надо будет option without even thinking about it. The spoken subcorpus has them about 100:1.
The situation is about the same with должен: the most typical word order in the past is должен был and in the future должен будет.
I was sure that ехать/ездить means drive, whereas ходить/идти means go. Why is drive not accepted and how am I supposed to differentiate between go and go?
Actually, "go" covers all those verbs, so, if you translate from English to Russian, both ехать and идти will be correct. Еxaть/ездить mean "to ride (a horse, a bike, in a car/sled), to ski (ехать на лыжах), to slide from a slide or any slope". "To drive" usually translates into "вести/водить [машину]" or "гнать [стадо]" (to drive a herd) and only corresponds to ехать/ездить if it has no direct object and refers to driving a vehicle. If you say "we'll have to drive home", it will mean that all of you will be behind steering wheels, which the Russian sentence does not imply. Идти/ходить implies "walking" most of the time. It also means "to sail" in sailors' jargon, "to go on" - speaking of an event, and "to work" - speaking of a clock or a watch.
As Dmitry said, in summary:
To go (by foot): идти/ходить To go (by vehicle): ехать/ездить To drive a car: вести/водить машину
There are different phrases and expressions that use these verbs in certain contexts, but for now these are the general rules
i was taught from the notes that this kind of future structure is for prolonged actions or prolonged situations. this sentence though does not look like a prolonged situation. so why after all it is correct ?
You were probably thinking of "будет ехать" ("will be traveling"), but, in the given sentence, будет is part of надо будет ("it will be necessary").
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"Soon we'll need to go home." ~ "We need to go home soon." What difference does "will" or будет make here? I do understand that will/будет must be translated because it is there, but don't they both refer to the future even without it just because they have soon/скоро?
