Archives for: September 2010, 22

Сок (часть первая)

September 22nd, 2010 by Don

The word for juice is сок. Usually when we talk about juice, we specify the type of juice, thus we have phrases like:

apple juice
orange juice
grape juice

In English the phrase “apple juice” is made up of two nouns where the first noun modifies the second noun. In Russian you don't normally use a first noun to modify a second noun. Instead you change the first noun into an adjective and then use it with the second word, thus:

Noun Adjective Phrase Meaning
яблоко яблочный яблочный сок apple juice
апельсин апельсиновый апельсиновый сок orange juice
виноград виноградный виноградный сок grape juice

Here are some sample sentences:

— Какой сок ты хочешь?
— Яблочный.		 “What kind of juice do you want?”
“Apple juice.”
Боря очень любит апельсиновый сок. Boris really likes orange juice.
Я думал, что это яблочный сок, но оказывается, что это виноградный сок. I thought that this was apple juice, but it turns out that it is grape juice.
Купи мне гранатовый сок, пожалуйста. Buy me pomegranate juice, please.

Many liquids sometimes appear in the genitive case to indicate ‘a quantity of,’ and juice is one of them. We call that usage the partitive genitive. Note the contrast in these sentences:

Он выпил сок. (accusative) He drank the juice.
Он выпил сока. (genitive) He drank some juice.

Сок is interesting because it has an alternative partitive genitive case form соку in addition to the regular genitive; sometimes we call those forms ‘second genitives.’ Thus you might come across:

Он выпил соку. (second genitive) He drank some juice.

Those second genitives are becoming less and less common. They are more conversational in style, less formal. You are very likely to hear them out of the mouth of someone's grandmother. A younger person with a big-city education will use them less often.

Posted in Beverages | 4 comments »

Дома

September 22nd, 2010 by Don

There are three words that native speakers of English often confuse at first in their studies of Russian:

  1. The first one of those is дома, which is an adverb that means “at home.” It never changes its endings.
  2. The second is домой, which is an adverb that means “home” in the sense of “homeward/to home.” It never changes its endings.
  3. The third is дом, which is a noun that means “house” or “building” and occurs in the singular and plural of all six cases. The genitive singular of this nouns is дома, which is spelled the same as #1 above, but means something different. The nominative/accusative plural is дома “houses/buildings,” which again is spelled the same as #1 above, but obviously the meanings and stress don't match.

Today we are focusing on дома in the meaning “at home.” As an adverb it cannot be used with a preposition:

— Где ты была?
— Я была дома.		 “Where were you?”
“I was at home.”
— Когда я дома, я всегда учу английские глаголы.
— А когда я дома, я всегда смотрю по телевизору «Хаус».		 “When I am at home, I always memorize English verbs.”
“And when I am at home, I always watch ‘House’ on TV.”
— Не люблю ужинать в ресторанах.
— Это нормально. Лучше дома.		 “I don't like to eat in restaurants.”
“That's normal. It's better at home.”
Я ем кошачье мясо только дома, но не у друзей. I eat cat meat only at home, never at friends' houses.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment »