(no subject)

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

Иван-Царевич really, really disturbed me. This is a children's story? Weird... Anywho...

I don't understand the usage of the case for witch in this fragment: ...отрубил ведьме голову.

And does this phrase "И никто не заподозрил бы её в обмане" mean "And noone seemed to notice her in the illusion?" It's where they're walking to weigh them and she's wearing a heavy-looking (apparently) dress.

And this word, past tense verb female: упала
As well as: широченное

And I didn't know, is this appropriate, that verbs in past tense may not end in -л. Such as ...забыв обо всём на свете... не выдержав её веса. And I don't understand this phrase at all "Но внезапно из леса навстречу ему вышла сестра." Is it "but all of a sudden, from the forest, meeting him, came out his sister?" Sounds weird...

Comments

[simonff.livejournal.com]

1. It's regular dative.
2. "And no one would suspect her deception".
3. "упала" = "fell down". It's past from "упасть".
4. "широченное" = "extremely wide" (colloquial)
5. These ain't verbs. They are деепричастия. See a thread here a few weeks back. "Забыв" = "having forgotten", "не выдержав" = "not having withstood".
6. "But all of a sudden his sister came out of the forest towards him".

[rednameless.livejournal.com]

Actually, russian and english languages not allways can be nicely translated from one to another. ;) Like, I think, most other languages too.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

Regarding verbs that don't include -л in the past tense:

These do exist in Russian (look at мочь, masculine past мог, and other verbs that follow the same pattern), but забыв isn't one of them. It's actually a gerund.

Here is what Wade's Russian Grammar says about gerunds, since the professionals are better at explaining than I am:

Gerunds replace co-ordinate clauses or adverbial clauses of time, manner, cause, condition, etc. They are found mainly in written Russian, co-ordinate or adverbial clauses being preferred in speech.

The imperfective gerund denotes an action which is simultaneous to the action of the main verb. Either the two actions run in parallel or one interrupts the other. The following meanings are conveyed by the gerund:

он сидит, читая
He sits reading (=and reads)

[...]

The perfective gerund describes an action which is completed prior to the action denoted by the main verb:

Написав письмо, он лёг спать
Having written (=when, after he had written) the letter he went to bed

And so on. What you have are two perfective gerunds, formed from забыть and выдержать (just noticed that one!).

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

What a strange book you have. Деепричастия (упав / падая - having fallen / falling, наступив / наступая having stepped on / stepping on or having come / coming, пожелав / желая having wished / wishing) are not gerunds. They are verbal adverbs. This form has no direct equivalent in English, while gerund form has no direct equivalent in Russian. One of the possible ways to translate a verbal adverb is to use "having done" gerund form.

[beowabbit]

Technically, an English gerund is a verbal noun (“I like eating bananas”), but since the same form is used to form adverbial clauses (“Eating bananas, I watched the documentary about gorillas”), I think English speakers don’t distinguish between the two uses. So to an English speaker (me, anyway), it sounds natural to translate «деепричастие» as “gerund”, and I understand that that means a verbal adverb. (I also understand that it’s a kind of loose use of the word “gerund”, and that I shouldn’t use it for comparable forms in Latin.)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, OK. Since there is little difference between the two, let's count them as the same. Деепричастие is quite tricky in usage anyway. As others say here, people rarely use it in real speech (though, for instance, I do, sometimes -- especially when I address to my students, wishing to sound very formal:))))) -- but in written Russian it's widely used.

[bgmt.livejournal.com]

The word "gerund" comes from Latin. Where it meant, as far as I could gather (I do not speak Latin!) precisely деепричастие. As it does still in French (gérondif) (and most probably in other Latin languages).
English grammarians tried to superimpose Latin structure on a language that does not easily yield to such an operation. This inevitably led to confusion.
From the point of view of another language, the sentence "I saw him sitting there" can be grammatically parced in two different ways. 1) "sitting" is a gerund, I saw what? Sitting. 2) "sitting" is a verbal adjective, I saw him in which quality? Sitting. But this difference is just not there in English English. This shows quite clearly that the distinction between the two is very weak, if any, for an English speaker.

As for using деепричастия in speach, the thesis of their not being used is somewhat exagerated. I do, as many other people. Depends on personal style.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

You're right that they aren't equivalent to English gerunds, but for some reason it's not uncommon to refer to them as gerunds in English books about Russian. Wade's grammar isn't an obscure book; it's one of the most popular reference books on Russian. (It's this one (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0631207570/qid=1106315320/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl14/103-0371366-3042246?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).)

Using "gerund" is somewhat old-fashioned, though. I think that newer books refer to them as verbal adverbs or something else more accurate. Probably should have used "verbal adverb" myself.

[aveleen.livejournal.com]

Participle is the exact translation of the verb причастие, bit it's true that gerunds fulfill in English the same function that причастия and деепричастия do in Russian. Cf:

- I saw a laughing girl./Я увидел смеющуюся девочку.
- Laughing, he came towards me./Смеясь, он подошел ко мне.

[madrumos.livejournal.com]

1. ведьма here is in dative. Verbs of harm like отрубить, порезать, сломать take dative for the person being harmed. For instance: Он порезал себе палец. Она сломала ему ногу. Why? Just because.

2. This phrase could be better translated "And no one would have suspected her deception". Заподозрить is a perfective verb, related to подозрительный и подозреваемый, for instance. Обман, обмануть/обманывать means to decieve or trick.

3. Упасть is perfective "to fall," with падать being the imperfective. It conjugates as follows:
Упасть

ч упадУ
ты упадёшь
он/а/о упадёт
мы упадём
вы упадёте
они упадУт

он упАл
она упАла
они упАли

упадИ!

3. My dictionary has широчЕнный as a colloquial word meaning "very wide, broad".

4. Oh my, you don't know participles or verbal adverbs. These can be a pretty complicated and confusing part of Russian grammar, they are common, so you may want to look into them further. They aren't generally used in speech, just in writing.
In this case, забыв is not just a plain past tense conjugation, but a verbal adverb form meaning "having forgotten". It is perfective, and shows that an action had already been completed by the time the next one started (i.e., "Having forgotten about everything, he fell asleep."). There are other forms for present tense verbal adverbs. The -в ending (-вшись when -ся is present) is universal, and does not change for case, number or gender.
I'd translate the last sentence "But suddenly his sister came out towards him from the woods." The word order is just kinda funny. Навстречу +dative means "towards" or "to meet...".

[yms.livejournal.com]

I don't understand the usage of the case for witch in this fragment: ...отрубил ведьме голову.

But it's possible to ask in English "What has he done to the witch?" This "to" is roughly the same as dative case, so in Russian we say something like "he chopped the head to the witch".

[surok75.livejournal.com]

Wolfie - don't be downhearted! Keep asking questions, and you'll get there in the end!

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

Спасибо большой! It's just frustrating to know that you have SO much left to learn, and that even sentences I compose usually don't make any Russian sense (and sometimes even English sense!)

[sergiusis.livejournal.com]

My English is not very good... Actually, it's very bad in a part of "russian to english" translating...
But I hope, I can help with some stilistic ramarks.

For example, word "спасибо" is of neuter gender, so adjective "большой" will be herd as "большое"...

I am sorry if said something wrong...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

It would be really helpful to memorize that спасибо is neutral :)))) Спасибо большое, not большой.

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

Ax! In speech it all sounds the same...

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Not really. Those two endigs, большой and большое, are easlily distinguishable from each oher in speech. First is shorter and more energetic, if you know what I mean :))

[sergiusis.livejournal.com]

Ending of "большой" is "ой", which is herd like "oy" in "boy"
In "ое" at "большое" "е" is ютированный vowel sound, what meens that it actually consists of two sounds - "й" и "э". Almost like "ye" in "year".

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

I know, but I'm saying that in conversations between two Russians (which would be a very fast conversation), to me it seems alike. I know how it's pronounced, but I also know that if I took the time to enounce the two vowels, people would look at me strange.

[sergiusis.livejournal.com]

Hmm... In fast speech such distortion may be very frequent. Because of "проглатывание" of some sounds. But it's right only in situation when this phrase is in the end of sentence. In the sentence look like "Спасибо большое за то, что...", all vowels must be uttered correctly.
But, for example, in sentence "Дом был большой" I will utter all sounds.
This is famous russian language problems of articulation... The same sentence may mean different things in different inflexions. So, if you accent word "большое", you have to say it completely. (especially because it have a stress at the last penult)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

People would never look strange at you if you would speak correctly :) It's rather funny when a person with an obvious foreign accent tries to imitate fast colloquial Russian speech, while when a foreigner speaks correct Russian, it sounds really nice even with a heavy accent. Most of the people whose native language is English would never get rid of a heavy accent in Russian (since the two phonetic systems are TOO different: the opposite is also true,) but they still can speak correct, literate Russian.

[oryx_and_crake]

Many folk tales are actually myths with underlying layer of deeper meaning (think Propp).

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, the bear is one of the main characters of Eastern Slavic (pre-Russian) mythology --> fairy tales. Being the mightiest and cleverest beast in the endless forests of medieval Eastern Europe, it always played a great role in mass consciousness in ancient Rus. Note that in all three languages that evolved from the ancient Russian (as well as in those dialects which were swalloved by one of the post-15th century languages, like Ilmen Slovenian of Novgorod was swallowed by Russian,) the ancient word for the bear - бер - has been replaced by that shy description "the one who knows where honey is": медведь in Russian, ведмiдь in Ukrainian etc. This is probably because the real name of the beast was a taboo ("don't call the trouble while it's still silent", не зови лихо, пока оно тихо.)

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

the ancient word for the bear - бер - has been replaced by that shy description "the one who knows where honey is"

Rather common superstition. In fact, real IE root survived in southern languages only, such as Latin (ursus) and Greek (άρκτος). But Germanic "bär-" itself is also an euphemism, "a brown one", caused by the same Northern hunters' taboo.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Well, this might mean that Slavic and Germanic languages have split after that taboo became common. BTW it's funny that the Germanic euphemism still seems to live in one Russian word, "берлога" (lair,) easily decryptable as two roots, "бер" (from бер, "bär") and "лог" (логово, lair, German "lieg-" etc.)

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, most etymologists reject this theory (see Vasmer's dictionary).

Well, however, I was also suprised by the fact that Russian "птица" (bird) and Greek "πτήση" (flight) have nothing in common ;-)