написать vs списать

[marta-mb.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I have just joined this community, and it seems the right place to ask a grammar question. I’ve been trying to learn Russian prefixed verbs and encountered a problem with the prefixes на‑ and c‑. Both have what is called a perfective meaning, i.e. denote the completeness of an action:

написать: to write up, i.e. to have written something (opposed to писать which means to write)

сделать: to have done something, to complete (ex.: Я сделал задание “I have completed the assignment”)

The verb списать means “to copy”.

So the question is whether the verb списать besides its main meaning may have the same grammatical meaning as сделать, i.e. “to write something up, to complete writing something” and is the synonym to написать

Спасибо!

UPD. Thanks everybody! I seem to have grasped my mistake. I thought the prefixes с-, на- only modify the grammatical meaning making verbs perfective. In fact, they do this but additionally they may modify the lexical meaning as well, which is the case with списать.

списать = писать + perfective meaning (completed action)  + new lexical meaning (i.e. 'to write making a copy').

Ah, sorry for these complications! :-))

Comments

[oryx_and_crake]

The prefix c- can indeed have the meaning of complete action, but here it is slightly different. I would say it has a meaning of transferring something (it is similar to рисовать - срисовать, for example - you are transferring a text or a picture from the original to the copy). In other words, списать means to write FROM somewhere. I hope this makes sense.

[robomarkov.livejournal.com]

Write from as in "I am write to you from my work"?

[robomarkov.livejournal.com]

Bah! And I am a native speaker... I hide in shame now.


"I am writing to you from my [place of] work."

[oryx_and_crake]

Sorry, this has nothing to do with what I said. Don't misguide people. списать means to write (to copy over), say, a text from a book, same as срисовать means to copy a picture. It has nothing to do with your physical location at the moment when you are writing.

[marta-mb.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I see these prefixes have multiple meanings, sometimes rather subtle. So it's difficult to learn them in advance and derive the meaning of a verb from the "prefix" + "verb itself". This would be possible if, say, c- had only ONE meaning. Then it would be possible to derive the meaning of списать from the meaning of c- + писать. Besides, there is a verb переписать whose meaning is close to списать.
So it's quite a problem.

[kaizou-konpaku.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's correct. I think, each prefix in Russian has several distinct meanings that can be not related with each other.

[marta-mb.livejournal.com]

ditto

[kaizou-konpaku.livejournal.com]

Whenever you need some help with Russian, feel free to consult with me :)

[marta-mb.livejournal.com]

ОК. Who are you?

We are offtop-ing

[kaizou-konpaku.livejournal.com]

All is in my info (including ICQ).

[oryx_and_crake]

Yes, I think at this stage you would be better off if you just learn what each verb means, prefix and all. Besides, there are complicated cases like бегать - сбЕгать - сбегАть (this one is not even perfective), бежать - сбежать etc.

[thespinningone.livejournal.com]

"списать" differs from "написать" in its lexical meaning: "списать" is either to copy smth from a book or some other place (a teacher can give an assignment like this to children), or it can mean "to cheat, to copy someone else's work"..

[marta-mb.livejournal.com]

is there a difference between списать and переписать then??

[kaizou-konpaku.livejournal.com]

There is ;) "Переписать" doesn't mean in general (at least I haven't encountered such examples) "to cheat copying somebody's work" but means just "copy from one place to another".

[thespinningone.livejournal.com]

kaizou_konpaku is right. moreover, "переписать" can mean "to do some work once more, to re-write"..

[g0mez.livejournal.com]

There's a verb "списаться (с кем-то)" meaning to get acquainted by mail (with somebody) (literally to have yours and someones writings complete - just like in your question), but it is rarely/never used in form "списать (кого-то с кем-то)", people used to say "я дал их адреса друг другу" ("i gave their addresses to each other") instead.

[oryx_and_crake]

I think you misunderstood the original question.

[g0mez.livejournal.com]

Please continue. What makes you think so?

[oryx_and_crake]

Because
a) the question was about списать and not about списаться which has an entirely different meaning
2) because you cannot say "списать (кого-то с кем-то)" at all, and therefore this is irrelevant to the question.

[g0mez.livejournal.com]

1) the question was about списать as a synonym to написать and not about the "copy" meaning of списать (obviously known to the one who asked), so following your logic and giving a consideration to your own comment you misunderstood the question as well, right?

b) the only "relevant" answer would be short "No", so may be we better consider things relevant if they help learners in any way?

[oryx_and_crake]

If you invent unexisting constructs, only to say that they are "rarely or never" used, you don't help language learners at all.

[g0mez.livejournal.com]

Good point. But here the topic is about the unexisting construct. Like:

Q: Does such a construct exist [construct]?
A1: No
A2: Neither does [very similar unexisting construct]

makes sense to me.

[vakhitov.livejournal.com]

Errr, non-existent? :-)

[kaizou-konpaku.livejournal.com]

Well, the verb "списать" indeed has perfective meaning, too, but there some mentioned above lexical differences, and one couldn't be used instead of the other. Thus, they are not synonyms at all.

[msk01.livejournal.com]

To complete your list, there is a fourth word: делать ;)
It means to do a very lot of something useless: "Он наделал целую кучу этих штук".

Also it's used in some idioms:
- "Наделать дел" - means to done a lot of work completely wrong, to do something terrible: "Ну ты и наделал делов".
- "Наделать в штаны" - literally means to defecate in pants, used when somebody's scared by smth. "Они наделали в штаны и убежали".

[siberian-cat.livejournal.com]

Another meaning for списать is "to write off". Списать устаревшее оборудование. Списать долги.