Где почта?

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

When I learned Russian, I remember learning that налево/направо was for direction (As in, поверните направо) and слева/справа was for location (As in, Почта слево). In the book I'm teaching from now, it says "Где почта? Направо."

Has this changed? Is the distinction weakening/disappearing? Is "Где почта? Направо." acceptable now or is this book making a major error? Or is my memory just playing tricks on me?

EDIT: Okay thanks. After scouring the text, I haven't found any instances that can't be explained by ellipses of the verb of motion. But this is a sloppy textbook. What the hell is the point of introducing "giving directions" if they're not going to even give the verb "to turn"? They just have "Идите прямо, а потом налево". The text is Troika, fyi.

Comments

[-ufo-.livejournal.com]

Is "Где почта? Направо." acceptable now or is this book making a major error?

That's nothing, but mistake

[frz-blya.livejournal.com]

Possibly, it means "чтобы дойти до почты, поверните направо" or "идите направо". "Направо" is a simple, short, colloquial answer.

[mtyukanov.livejournal.com]

You are right, only it's "слева" и "справа".

When someone answers "где почта?" with "направо", it sounds like a colloquial shortcut for "к почте идите направо" or "посмотрите направо", so it's not something that is easily misunderstood. Still, it's too bad that such a colloquialism is used in a textbook. It is not particulary useful ("справа" works perfectly, no need for additional shortcuts), so actually it's just a sloppy Russian.

[zyxelek.livejournal.com]

You makes a mistake not "слево\справо" but "слева\справа"

perhaps the phrase is in dialog?

-Где почта? One person asks the direction
-Направо means that the person must going to the right

it's correct in this case

Ex.my engl.

[oryx_and_crake]

Почта - направо is actually OK because it specifies not the physical location of the building but rather a direction in which you have to go to reach it. E.g. when you visit someone for the first time and they are showing you around they may say "направо - спальня, налево - туалет, прямо - дверь в кладовку". However if you were lost looking for a washroom (say, it's middle of the night and there has been a blackout) you roommate would say "дверь в ванную - справа, дверь в спальню - слева" meaning more their physical locations than the directions... Hope it made some sense...

P.S. Please keep in mind that it is "направО, налевО" but "справА, слевА".

[oryx_and_crake]

"Идите прямо, а потом налево" looks perfectly OK to me

[icedink.livejournal.com]

It's lazy Russian language, rather than lazy textbook: and possibly they're trying not to overwhelm you with too many verbs. In English, we too would say, "Go straight, and then left."

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Not as lazy, as colloquial which is indeed tends to save on verbs. In such complex predicates it's common to omit repeating verbs even in formsl speech.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

It's actually a pretty good textbook. I liked it because it has a "communicative" approach, i.e. focuses on speech as it is, introduces the more useful words and phrases first, etc., rather taking a grammatical approach, which is really difficult for beginners.