Новый год — 2010

by Don  

To wish someone well on December 31st, in English we say “Happy New Year.” If we are having an anal retentive moment and wish to use a complete sentence, we say “We wish you a Happy New Year.” (Nota bene: we usually capitalize all three words.) The Russian equivalents are «С Новым годом» and «Поздравляем вас с Новым годом». The latter literally means “We congratulate you upon the occasion of the New Year.” (Nota bene: the single Russian sound «с» is equivalent to the English phrase “upon the occasion of”. See how superior Russian is to the decaying languages of the West? Begin learning Russian immediately, if not sooner.)

The person you congratulate appears in accusative case, so if you want to add a laconic “you, too”, then the you must again use the accusative case:

— С Новым годом!
— И вас, тоже.
“Happy New Year!”
“You, too.”

At Christmastide we often supplement “Merry Christmas” with “and many happy returns!” The Russians often supplement «с Новым годом» with «с новым счастьем» “and new happiness/fortune”, which, come to think of it, is pretty similar in spirit to the English phrase, though obviously not a word-for-word translation. It is not traditional in English to add “many happy returns” to a New Year's wish, but on this occasion we’ll let that slide:

Ли (часть вторая)

by Don  

Previously we discussed the particle ли, which turns a statement into a question, and we noted that ли must occur as the second item in the sentence. All our example sentences had a single word before ли. It turns out that certain phrases, that is, groups of more than one word, can be the first item before ли. First of all, prepositional phrases can come before ли:

В Африке ли живут кенгуру? Is it in Africa that kangaroos live?
До войны ли вы жили в Париже? Was it before the war that you lived in Paris?

The negative particle не is also a clitic, that is, it is pronounced as part of the word that follows it; unlike ли, it is a proclitic, that is, it is pronounced as part of the word before which it appears. When it combines with a prepositional phrase or other word, the whole unit can occur before ли:

Не в Москве ли родился Путин? Wasn't Putin born in Moscow?
— Не Пушкин ли написал «Гамлета»?
— Да что ты, «Гамлета» написал Шекспир.
“Wasn't it Pushkin who wrote Hamlet?”
“Oh, come on, Hamlet was written by Shakespeare.”

This is very common with certain politness phrases:

Не хотите ли вы чая? Would you like some tea?

And you can even add a бы to the sentences to make them even more polite:

Не хотели ли бы вы чая? Would you happen to care for some tea?
Не смогли ли бы вы помочь мне? Could you be so kind as to help me?

Notice the word order here: не comes before the verb. Ли comes immediately after the verb. Бы comes immediately after ли. The subject pronoun comes immediately after бы. No other word order works in these contexts.

Как (часть вторая)

by Don  

Every Russian 101 student knows that the word как can mean ‘how.’ There are other contexts, though, where как is best left untranslated. This is particularly true after the verbs видеть ‘to see’, заметить ‘to notice’, наблюдать ‘to observe’, следить ‘to observe’, слушать ‘to listen’, слышать ‘to hear’ and смотреть ‘to watch’.

Мы слушали, как пели птицы. We listened to the birds singing.

In this kind of sentence the word как has no ‘how’ meaning at all; it simply marks the beginning of a new clause. In other words, this sentence does NOT mean “We listened to how the birds were singing.” The sentence means we listened to the event itself, not that we were trying to discern the manner in which they sang. Here are some other simple examples:

Ты слышал, как соседка ругала сына? Did you hear our neighboring scolding her son?
Мама смотрела, как Наташка каталась по двору на скейтборде? Mom watched Natalya ride around the courtyard on the skateboard.

You will notice that all three of the previous sample sentences had an imperfective past tense verb in the subordinate clause. If the action of the subordinate clause takes place at the same time as the action of the main clause, then you can have a present tense verb in the subordinate clause without changing the meaning, e.g.:

Мы слушали, как поют птицы. We listened to the birds singing.
Ты слышал, как соседка ругает сына? Did you hear our neighboring scolding her son?
Мама смотрела, как Наташка катается по двору на скейтборде? Mom watched Natalya ride around the courtyard on the skateboard.

Here are some more complex sentences that use the construction:

Державин слушал, как молодой Пушкин читал свои стихи. Derzhavin listened to the young Pushkin reciting his poetry.
Дети видели, как разбился самолет. (source) The children saw the plane break into pieces.
Все думали, что аэропорт закроют, но было слышно, как садятся самолеты. (same source) Everyone thought that they would close the airport, but one could hear the planes landing.
Вера тихо лежала в постели и слушала, как пели птицы. Vera quietly lay in bed and listened to the birds singing.
Милиционеры наблюдали, как подозреваемый вошёл в банк. The policemen observed the suspect enter the bank.

Ли (часть первая)

by Don  

A reader recently asked me to address the word ли. That's an excellent topic for a beginning Russian blog, but before we talk about ли, we should get a little background information. When Russians ask yes-no questions, they usually use the same words as an ordinary statement, but they change the intonation. For instance, a statement “Boris speaks English” comes out like this, where the blue line indicates the approximate intonation pattern:

That pattern is known as “intonation construction 1” in Russian pegadogical circles. To turn that into the question “Does Boris speak English?”, we rephrase it using “intonation construction 3”:

It's a pain in the rear to design special graphics to outline every sentence in which you wish to indicate intonation, so we often use a rather more compact way of indicating intonation with numbers. The syllable on which the most drastic shift of tone takes places is called the “intonation center.” Once you have indicated where the intonation center is, everything else about the tone pattern is predictable, so we simply indicate the intonation center by writing the number above the vowel where that dramatic shift happens. For instance, the statement “Boris speaks English” is represented like this:

                     1
Борис говорит по-английски.

The question “Does Boris speak English?” is represented like this:

           3
Борис говорит по-английски?

Theoretically you can put intonation construction three on any part of the sentence that bears the logical focus of the question. If the question is general, then you usually end up putting the intonation on the verb, thus

      3
Мама хочет пойти домой?

means “Does Mom want to go home?”, whereas

                    3
Мама хочет пойти домой?

means something like “Mom wants to go home?”, i.e., the focus is on whether she wants to go home as opposed to some other place. Contrast that with

 3
Мама хочет пойти домой?

which means something like “Is it Mom who wants to go home?”, i.e. the focus is on whether it is Mom who wants to go home, as opposed to Grandma or someone else.

Bearing that in mind, there is another way of asking yes-no questions in Russian, and that is by using ли, which is a postclitic particle. By particle we mean a word that never changes its endings. By clitic we mean that it is pronounced as part of a word that it is next to. By post- we mean that it is pronounced as part of the word it appears after. As a postclitic it will never be the first item in a sentence; it must be the second item. Thus if we want to rephrase “Does Boris speak English?” using ли, it would come out like this:

     3
Говорит ли Борис по-английски?

The three other questions we looked at above would be rephrased like this:

 3
Хочет ли мама пойти домой?

   3
Домой ли мама хочет пойти?

 3
Мама ли хочет пойти домой?

Yes-no questions without ли are perfectly normal in spoken Russian. When you add ли, it raises the stylistic level a bit, making it more formal or more polite.

In all our examples here, there is only one word before ли. It's possible to have more than one word in front of it, and in fact in some contexts it's very common. We'll discuss those in the next article on ли.


Note: some of the examples in this blog entry may seem a bit stilted. It's actually rather difficult to come up with long yes-no questions that comfortably illustrate the different possible focus points of intonation or ли without sounding stilted. The important point to remember here is that theoretically ли can place its focus on any phrase that immediately proceeds it. Despite their awkwardness, all theses sentences are perfectly grammatical Russian, and it would be possible for a Russian to say them given a suitable context preceding them.

Дневник

by Bella  

When I was younger, I used to have this pink composition notebook with stickers all over it. It also had suggestions like, "keep out" and "private" written on the cover. It was my very own дневник diary. This word can also be used to mean datebook, but today I am using it as diary.

SgPl
Nomдневникдневники
Accдневникдневники
Genдневникадневников
Preдневникедневниках
Datдневникудневникам
Insдневникомдневниками

Here are some example sentences:

Каждый день я пишу в своём дневнике.
Every day I write in my diary.

Маша спрятала дневник под кровать.
Masha hid her diary under the bed.

Мои личные днeвники дома, в коробке.
My personal diaries are at home, in a box.

Анна рассказала мне о дневниках из Франции.
Anna told me about the diaries from France.

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