question

[soidisantfille.livejournal.com]

I know that встретиться means "to meet", but what does it mean when you use it in the construction "мне встретился"?  My guess was that it means something like "it came to me" - am I right?

Comments

[oryx_and_crake]

Could you provide some context? This could mean different things (however, none of them would mean "it came to me").

[soidisantfille.livejournal.com]

It's from an interview with Sholokhov on his story Fate of a man: "Мне встретился скиталец с мальчиком, биография его почти во всем схожа, военная биография, и под живый впечатлением я написал рассказ."

[oryx_and_crake]

Well, here it means "I met" (that's a straightforward dictionary meaning of the word). Мне встретился can also mean "I came across" if you are talking about inanimate objects, e.g. Эта цитата встретилась мне в книге - I came across this quotation in a book.

[soidisantfille.livejournal.com]

I see. The мне was throwing me off because I didn't understand why it took the dative...

[oryx_and_crake]

Я встретил скитальца and мне встретился скиталец are equivalent.

[pigmeich.livejournal.com]

Because -ся suffix is present.

[lyuba-glotova.livejournal.com]

"мне встретился" значит "я встретил". и ничего больше. мне кажется, это практически синонимы. В этом примере можно также сказать - "я встретил скитальца с мальчиком". вполне синонимичные конструкции.

[oryx_and_crake]

You are right, but please note that the working language of this community is English. Thank you.

[drivebyluna.livejournal.com]

I've also heard it means "to date"?

[oryx_and_crake]

Not exactly. To say "to date" you would use встречаться. We are dating - мы встречаемся.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

"To date" is встречаться like a boy and girl go out together, you know, бегать на свидания.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Yup, and it must be in imperfective form. Can be also "see each other."

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

They ARE equivalent.

I'd say, if you go into a fine shades of meanings, that "я встретил" means that I did something that resulted in meeting him and "мне встретился" means that HE did something that resulted in me meeting him. But really, most of people use them as interchangeble constructions.

[giantantattack.livejournal.com]

+1

[pigmeich.livejournal.com]

Note, you'd say "Я встретился с кем-то (творительный)", but "Мне встретился кто-то (именительный)". "Я встретился кому-то (дательный)" is also acceptable, but odd.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

It may indeed be somewhat similar to the English constructs such as "it came/happened/occurred to me" and Russian reflexive "(у меня) разбилась чашка" (as opposed to "я разбил чашку") in which you kind of withdraw yourself as the doer from the action making it look like you didn't do something or although you did, it was unintentional or unforeseen. You may ***probably*** say that the appearance of the wanderer was unexpected; the encounter wasn't sought. You can express that the normal and explicit way as well: Я неожиданно встретил скитальца. But I don't feel strongly for this connotation in this particular case. The two different forms are pretty much equivalent as others say.