кое-что /or/ что-то

[david-us.livejournal.com]

In my studies (on an audio CD) I ran across the following sentence that I was required to translate into Russian.

(Woman speaking)

"I bought something."

I translated it as, "Я купила что-то."

Then the translation was provided as, "Я купила кое-что."

Was I wrong? Is there a difference between the two; кое-что/что-то? If not, which is more common?

Thanks!

David Emerling
Memphis, TN

Comments

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

My mom, when she buys something for me or my dad unexpectedly, she teases us with the phrase "(а) я что-то купила" which is said with a certain tone and look and can be repeated several times for us to get interested, drop everything and come to see and get the thing.

It's also quite common to use что-то in such a sentence to denote something rather insignificant (could be cheap or insignificant in other ways) or something the buyer/bringer hasn't fully understood and left for later or to others to to figure out.

Кое-что means something that the buyer definitely knows. But the other person either doesn't know that something (teasing again) or does know/is expected to figure out (from the context or recent events) while the buyer doesn't want to name the thing because of certain inappropriateness or the desire to keep it secret (the latter being when there's a 3rd person present).