The Difference between 'я, мне, меня'.

[xxblackxsatinxx.livejournal.com]

Hey everyone! :) I hope everyone is doing well! I finished my first year of university along with my first year of formal education in Russian. I do have some questions though..

My teacher has yet to really explain the difference between я, мне, меня.

I find myself often confusing мне, and меня. Now, what really stumps me is the мне.

If anyone is patient enough to try to explain the differences and in what instant you'd use them, I'd be forever grateful!

Also, I was wondering if anyone is still interested in being chat buddies. :) I finally got around to getting ICQ because I noticed that MANY Russians are still using ICQ. If you want to add me, I'm slow at conversations but I appreciate the practice! 591022109.

Спасибо большое! :D

Comments

[metallicstream.livejournal.com]

Er...cases. You've done cases, right?

я - first person nominative (I, as in "I like eggs")
меня - first person accusative/genitive (me, as in "You like me")
мне - first person dative (to me, as in "He gave it to me")

Somebody will probably give a more detailed explanation than this soon, but I'm just kind of shocked that this hasn't been covered in your first year of Russian.

[priapic-saint.livejournal.com]

Ouch, ICQ... There they would teach you to say мну instead я, мне etc. Kind of teenager slang, suppletive declination seems to be too difficult for them, too. )

[chiyo-no-saru.livejournal.com]

Yes, this. I hope to God you've done cases. O_O

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Surprise, surprise. These are the three most useful cases. I wonder how many hours of instruction was there...

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

*were*

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Actually, don't you have any textbook or grammar book? What does it say about these forms of the personal pronoun and the cases?

[romik-g.livejournal.com]

there they...
not all

[johnnyever.livejournal.com]

All two of my ICQ friends are Russian. ;)

[cassandraclue.livejournal.com]

Я is nominative. You are the subject of the sentence.
Меня is accusative. You the direct object. (You love me.)
Мне is dative. You are the indirect object. (He wrote a letter to me.)

Same with ты/тебя/тебе and so on.

[adenalinka.livejournal.com]

:) I'm Russian living in Poland. I don't like to use ICQ, my Skype is alina.grebennikova, you can write me if you want.

Помогу, чем смогу.

[8after8.livejournal.com]

Do you mean the difference like that:
I am 20 y.o. (I am cold) Мне 20 лет (Мне холодно)
I've got a dog. (У меня есть собака)
I study Russian (Я учу русский язык)?
When you do something, when you act use Я.
When you have something - у меня.
When you feel something (cold, hot, I like), when something doesn't depend on you - мне.
It's not simple as that, only the general cases.

[xxblackxsatinxx.livejournal.com]

мне - first person dative (to me, as in "He gave it to me")

And that is why my problem lies within мне.

We've only covered nominative, accusative, genetive and prepositional. We learn dative and instrumental in third year, I believe. I would always use 'я' in sentences and my friends would correct me and say 'мне'.. and I couldn't understand why.

[xxblackxsatinxx.livejournal.com]

And we only have three hours a week with a 30+ student class size between the months of September to November and then January to April.

[alexzzzzz.livejournal.com]

У меня есть собака. => Есть собака у меня. => There is a dog… hmmm… by/near me. (genitive)
Мне холодно. => (Есть) холодно мне. => It is cold to me. (dative)

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Du... deferring the dative until the 3rd year? WTH? Even if you cover it in the 2nd, it's somewhat late. I'd expect at least some coverage within the 1st year so you know a few cases where you should use мне instead of я. This is unbelievable. Not only you don't get enough instruction/practice, having 30+ students in the class is simply counterproductive. And then you have such long breaks. I think if you want some real progress, you should take charge of it and not rely on the teacher and what goes on in the classroom. If the teacher is willing and able to help, just ask them for advice w.r.t. self study: material selection, exercises/practice, what to look out for, etc.

[randystokes.livejournal.com]

Let me comment on the "pace" of introduction of cases. I just finished my first year of Russian at a local community college. During the first year we learned all but the instrumental case, and that final case is to be added in our second year. Maybe the original poster meant that dative and instrumental were being added in the third SEMESTER, not third year. It's difficult enough to get through the first year, trying to learn useful conversational and writing skills, when you haven't yet learned dative.

I've studied several other languages (Spanish, German and Italian), and the thing I noticed about Russian is that so many things you learn in the first few weeks in the other languages (how to say your age, how to express ownership and possession, etc.) wait until much later in Russian. The key, as most of you already know, is that you can't say a lot of those "common" things until after you've learned most of the cases. (The good news is that Russian doesn't use "helping" verbs, and past tense and future tense seem pretty simple, so I guess there's a tradeoff.)

[xxblackxsatinxx.livejournal.com]

It's bad enough the university wants to make language classes a lecture! The teachers are fighting so hard for it to remain smaller classes. Hmm.. the book we have is called Начало and we've covered... 4 parts.. roughly 180 pages.

The next 3 parts are covered in year two.. and then we get another Начало book.. it's pinkish red.. and cover more grammar.

I usually always go beyond what the teacher teaches in class because it's such a slow pace. I wish the classes were smaller.. it should be next year.

Other language classes are offered intensively 8 hours a week but there's only one Russian teacher R my university, and she teaches all four levels. It would be impossible.

I plan on going to St-Petersburg next summer to study Russian there. It's 20 hours a week.. for however long you wish during the summer.

I mean.. I find it ridiculous that I'm learning about instruments when I shouldn't know how to count passed 12 (I do because I taught myself) or the basic colours. In class, we have yet to cover colours or numbers passed 12... It's just stupid how the book is formatted.

[xxblackxsatinxx.livejournal.com]

No, I definitely meant third year. There are a lot of things that I ask elaboration on or other students in the class and the teacher always replies "You won't learn that 'til second or third year."

[randystokes.livejournal.com]

Teachers do things at their own pace and in their own order, I guess. You probably covered lots of other things we haven't seen yet. Occasionally someone in our class would ask a question, and our teacher would tell us not to be in such a hurry, that we'd get to it in the future. But congratulations on getting through your first year, and good luck next year.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Lectures... It's basically a disguised discontinuation of the class. You rarely learn from lectures alone. You have to try and do something yourself and do it many times to actually retain something in the memory and acquire skills. That's how you learn. And there's more than that to it.

AFAIK, several hundred years ago that form of instruction was tried at French manufactures -- the workers were read something educational while they were doing their work. Needless to say they learned nothing in the end. I know, it's a bit of an extreme example because the workers were additionally distracted by their work, but that's one of the earliest documented attempts to simply lecture. And if educators haven't learned the lesson over hundreds of years, what more can I say? :)

I think you really should just work on it your way:
- read the whole textbook, not waiting till it's covered in class. And probably you should get and read the next volume too if you haven't got it yet. Don't wait. The sooner you familiarize yourself with the language structure, the easier it will be down the road.

- start reading Russian prose. All things that are new or odd to you (besides the words themselves) you should look up in a grammar book and/or ask someone who's likely to explain them. Try to make sense out of those cases and all other details. Just get your hands and brain on the actual stuff... Don't study, as we Russians often joke, the spherical horse in vacuum. :)

Certainly, if you come over to Russia to refine the language, it will be a huge help. But before that, IMO, you should seriously improve the grammar and vocabulary. Otherwise it will be extremely hard.

[surkova.livejournal.com]

I've added you in ICQ (it's not my preferable IM, though), but it seems to me that we will never meet online because of timezones :(

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

Будем друзьями? В skype я skallabjorn. Сейчас в аську стукнусь.