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learn_russianRussian word "нет" is interesting. As far as I know, it is a reduced "не есть" (is not), and it had the following evolution: "не есть" -> "несть" -> "нет".
However, the "не есть" itself is still present in the language, with "есть" skipped as usual. In the contemporary Russian, "нет" and "не есть" mean two different things:
The rule of thumb is: "нет" = "no", "не" = "not". Hope this helps.
However, the "не есть" itself is still present in the language, with "есть" skipped as usual. In the contemporary Russian, "нет" and "не есть" mean two different things:
- "нет" means "no" or "[there] is no". In the latter case, it requires an object in Genitive. Example: "there is no spoon" = "ложки нет"
- "не есть" means "is not". Example: "I am not an American" = "я не американец/американка"
The rule of thumb is: "нет" = "no", "не" = "not". Hope this helps.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 06:38 pm (UTC)It's interesting that even in Church Slavonic the object was already sometimes Nominative (несть Бог) and sometimes Genitive (несть числа).
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 06:29 pm (UTC)"не есть" means "do not eat"
sorry for bad English.
p.s. and there NO word "несть".
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 06:36 pm (UTC)Google -> "не есть". I counted three usages in "my" meaning in the first two pages, including this one: http://wklim.narod.ru/logika.html
> p.s. and there NO word "несть".
Which I never stated there is.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 06:40 pm (UTC)but what about "несть"?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-27 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-27 02:47 am (UTC)BTW, as one of this community's maintainer's, I'm personally not very fond of people swearing here aimlessly. This is your first ticket. Second will be a ban.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-28 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-27 12:25 am (UTC)Jat was removed as part of the orthographic reforms in 1918, but Russian publications outside the USSR kept using jat until at least the 30's.
If your browser supports unicode pre-reform cyrillic, the correst old spelling of "to eat" is ѣсть.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-28 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 09:23 pm (UTC)Есть is also used if you want to say "There are spoons." You just need to make ложка plural (e.g. "Есть ложки.").
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 09:48 pm (UTC)As I understand it, in English, "Есть ложка." would be like saying "There is a spoon." But "Ложка есть." would be "There is a spoon." Where the emphasis is on the italicized word.
Like I said, I'm not 100% sure I'm right about this (I may have the word order-emphasis relationship backward), but I'm thinking it would all depend on the context of the statement in the first place.
^Correction
Date: 2004-09-26 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 10:17 pm (UTC)"есть ложка" is a changed word order. "есть" does not mean "exists" in this case, but rather a regular "is" or "we have" or "I have". Let me give you a couple of examples:
Don't eat soup with a fork. There is a spoon for that.
Не ешь суп вилкой. Для этого есть ложка.
How do we eat this soup? -- There is a spoon! (=we have a spoon)
Как нам съесть этот суп? -- Есть ложка! (=у нас есть ложка)
I hope I did not confuse the hell out of you :)
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 10:44 pm (UTC)No no, not at all. In fact, this makes perfect sense. I can now see that my problem was that I was thinking of есть as something other than the verb conjugation that it is. And I wasn't thinking of ложка in terms of being the subject, either.
Большое спасибо!
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 10:43 pm (UTC)Don't eat soup with a fork. There is a spoon for that.
Не ешь суп вилкой. Для этого есть ложка.
The more I think about it, the more it looks like "is" actually does mean "exists" here. So why did the word order change? I think that's because "для этого есть <something>" ("there is <something> for that") is a fixed word order expression in Russian.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-28 07:45 am (UTC)These are unexplainable nuances. Maybe word order actually follows speaker's thoughts?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-28 04:06 pm (UTC)"есть ложка" is more like "spoons do exist". And it sounds strange.
It does not sound strange, though, in a situation like:
"Do we have [some tool] to do [something]?" - "есть ложка" -- "we have a spoon and we can try to use it as that tool".
no subject
Date: 2004-09-27 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-27 01:58 am (UTC)