С+instrumental

[udarnitsa.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine has been receiving unsolicited commercial email (they're polite and can spell, so I won't call it spam this once) from a Russian company that will print your digital photos for a fee and deliver them via courier within the Moscow city limits. (My friend lives in the upper Midwest of the United States and thought the messages were in Arabic (!), so this was really a waste of effort on their part.)

One of the sentences in the email puzzled me:

Вы ПОЛУЧИТЕ отпечатанные снимки С КУРЬЕРОМ в течение 2-х дней.

What I want to know is, why does it say "С КУРЬЕРОМ" and not just "КУРЬЕРОМ "? The snapshots are delivered by the courier, not "with" him.

Comments

[melkiyshaman.livejournal.com]

It's the difference in the usage of prepositions in Eng & Russian.
Курьер is a person who deliveres something. And if something is delivered by курьер, we say "C курьером".

[noser.livejournal.com]

But we can also say "курьером" just as well. Also, "поездом", "самолетом", "пароходом", "дирижаблем", "бронетранспортёром" etc., but not "с поездом", "с самолетом" etc.

One can say "с курьером" only because курьер is a live person. Also, "с Васей", "с Петей", "с Вовой" etc, which, I believe, in English would also use a "with": "with John", "with Dave", but not: "by John", "by Dave".

So, there is not so much difference actually, if any.

[noser.livejournal.com]

The verb "to receive" is assumed above.

I know that "delivered _by_ John" is right :)

[melkiyshaman.livejournal.com]

брр %)
совсем меня запутал!
можно я по-русски напишу? :)
я помню, что нас учили, что выбор английского предлога зависит от падежа, в котором употребляется существительное. "получите (как? с кем?) с курьером" (кем-чем)- творительный падеж. Если я не ошибаюсь, предлог нужен именно by, то есть все сходится :) by the courier
А "получите курьером" все равно sounds nonsence :-P :)

[cema.livejournal.com]

Можно, почему же. Каким методом? Курьером. Просто курьер не только метод, но и человек, с которым это дело передаётся.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>можно я по-русски напишу? :)

PLEASE don't forget that the working language of this community is English. This community is not for those native Russian speakers who cannot write and/or speak their own language properly (which is the case with pishu_pravilno, but for those non-natives who learn Russian. We are here to help them, not to discuss language-related issues in the language most of them cannot comprehend yet.

[noser.livejournal.com]

If it's not too much text, I think a bit of colloquial Russian is a good excersize for those non-natives who want to know what those Russians are whispering about behind their backs :)

[noser.livejournal.com]

It doesn't sound like nonsense to me.

"получите письмо курьером"
"получите посылку почтой"

Instrumental (творительный) case, that's right.

Насчет английского, может я и наврал, сейчас не соображу. ;)

[temcat.livejournal.com]

It's either "вы получите снимки С курьером" or "снимки буду вам доставлены курьером". You can't say "вы получите снимки курьером".

[nadyezhda.livejournal.com]

Hmm, the idea of snapfish goes international! Very cool.

As the first poster explained, I think that English and russian prepositions don't translate very well across the language divide. Studying this sort of thing really makes you understand that ways of thinking really do vary from language to language.

[cema.livejournal.com]

Hmm, fotki.com are an American company started by a Russian (technically, I think he is an Estonian Jewish emigre-turned-expat, but who cares).

[noser.livejournal.com]

But "ПОЛУЧИТЕ" is not "delivered". "ПОЛУЧИТЕ" is the future tense of "to receive".

So, do you receive your mail by a postman or with a postman?

[yozhevich.livejournal.com]

By post, in the mail, or from a postman. There might be other possibilities...

[oryx_and_crake]

You should never expect word-to-word translation to work, especially concerning the prepositions.

Compare:
in the street - на улице
in the house - в доме
in a month - в течение месяца (или: через месяц)
at work - на работе
at school - в школе
at first - сначала
next week - на следующей неделе

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Yup, ant it's the difference in prepositions used in the same situations which puzzles many Russians studying English as well :))

[missa-gorightry.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, does "upper Midwest" mean Michigan? Arabic, haha. That just sounds like a Michigander.

[cema.livejournal.com]

You could say it either way. I do not think this grammatical difference has any pragmatical (in the linguistic sense) difference. That is, it's the same thing said in a different way.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_beast/]

курьер is animate object, while поезд and самолет are inanimate objects. i believe you have to use 'C' preposition with animate objects