Hallo!

[bugtilaheh.livejournal.com]

The name's Bradley (Брэдли?) or Bug (Баг?) and (и?) я учащийся колледжа (I'm a college student; is Я always capitalized like "I" is in English?). I live in the US in the state of Texas, near Houston. Some of you know me from linguaphiles. Anyway, I'm not a Russian student or anything (but a 3-year and 2-semester Spanish student, yes). I'm sort of learning it on my own (I'd rather learn Czech, but Russian's close enough =P). As of right now, I can *barely* hold a conversation in Czech (and Polish). I doubt it; I just know simple phrases, etc. The same goes for Russian; I already have the Cyrillic alphabet down as well, so all's good.

As some of you may know, my dad is full-blood Czech, and his parents used to speak Czech, but they have since forgotten it all (Grandma can remember some words, but if you spoke to her in Czech, or as she puts it "Bohemian," she wouldn't know how to respond) because they speak English now, and my grandfather is no longer alive. You can thank the good ol' USA for being monolingual. :-/

Anyway, I tend to write too much, so here's some questions about numbers...
I know the numbers in Czech up to 10. Are they the same in Russian? Well, okay, I think some of them are, but not all.
Compare.

Czech (with what it "sounds" like to me with the best romanization I can do):
Jedna (yed-nah), Dva (doo-vah), Tři (trzhee), Čtyři (chtirzhee—that's very difficult to pronounce!) Pět (be-yet), Šest (shest), Sedm (seh-doom), Osm (ah-soom), Devět (dev-e-yet), Deset (de-set)

Russian (with what it "sounds" like, got that from http://www.scifaiku.com/tom/misc/digits/):
один (odin), два (dva), три (tree), четыре (ch'tiri), пять (pyat), шесть (shyist), семь (syem), восемь (vosyim), девять (dyevit), десять (dyesit)

Feel free to correct. I did this quickly.

Comments

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

Neeeeeh?

Why is cjoy saying that there are two "вы"s, a singular and a plural? I've never heard of a singular вы, and I think I would have by now.

[yers.livejournal.com]

cjoy is talking about the вы that is the polite form of addressing a single person.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

Is it grammatically plural, then?

You would write вы видели and not вы видел or вы видела, right?

[cjoy.livejournal.com]

Right! Singular Вы is always grammatically plural. Ты видишь, ты видел(а) but Вы видите, Вы видели (addressing one person).

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

From what I've seen here and heard from my professor last night, there is only one "Вы". It's plural, but can be applied to singular persons, and it's sometimes capitalized in formal correspondence.

I have no idea why you're saying that there are two "Вы"s. Is this the way it's taught in Russia?

[cjoy.livejournal.com]

It's not the way it's taught. It's the way it is. (Do you know Spanish for instance? The simple difference between tu & Usted. It's the same. Is it so difficult?)

[bugtilaheh.livejournal.com]

Usted isn't capitalized (at least, not anymore). Unless it comes at the beginning of a sentence, of course.

I've seen it abbreviated to Ud. or Vd., but usted works fine.

¿Cómo está usted? ¿Cómo está Ud.? ¿Cómo está ud.? No difference.

[bugtilaheh.livejournal.com]

Sorry, the last ud. should read Vd. Usted is abbreviated to Ud. or Vd. and that's just the way it is.

[cjoy.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. In Spanish it's a little bit more complicated. Besides, Spanish has such pronouns for both singular and plural: Vd/Vds. In Russian in plural there's no diffirence. We always say вы (non-capitalized) while addressing to any amount of persons more than one (no style differences). For one person if we are addressing to the fellow lad/gal we would say ты, and to anyone else Вы. This latter Вы is always capitalized. (And you can see it in the picture below in this thread.)

[cjoy.livejournal.com]

and it's sometimes capitalized in formal correspondence.

Rubbish! Вы used to address the only one person is always capitalized. Singular Вы presumes formal style. When you write "вы" to anyone this means either you are saying about a scope of people or you are illiteral.

[avva.livejournal.com]

Polite usage of singular Вы in Russian is similar to polite usage of singular vous in French, though the social divisions do not precisely coincide.

Though both are plural morphologically and syntactically, they are felt to be singular semantically by native speakers. Native speakers experience "singular" Вы/вы and plural вы as two separate lexemes.