Thread: -то

Privet,
I’m not sure I grasp the meaning of -то shoved onto the end of words. Can someone explain please??/

ogromnoye spasibo

Yea. I dunno the grammatical term but in essence it just makes things more 'vague'. For example


что what
что-то something

где where
где-то somewhere

кто Who
Кто-то someone

какой What a
Какой-то Some kind of a


You get my drift??

very good, but not complete a bit though

Historically, '-то' was something like an article, like the English 'the' or so. Now it is rudimental in Russian but developed into a fully functional article in, e.g., Bulgarian, where it even has genders: -ът and -та, like 'le' and 'la' in French.

In Russian it implies that the subject is known or was recently discussed; besides, usually it means some contrast to what was said, supposed or believed, or to emphasize a fact. For this reason it frequently comes after "но" (which means 'but') or "а" (its meaning is somewhere between 'but' and 'and'; is there an equivalent in English?).

"Учительница не пришла" would mean just 'the teacher hasn't come'. This may imply a possibility that she will come.

"Учительница-то не пришла" might mean 'You see? (or: did you notice?) The teacher hasn't come', sometimes with emphasis, that this is fully in accordance to what you believed previosly, or, alternatively, is quite contrary to what you expected; usually implies that there is no use in waiting more.

So , using "то", we attract our attention to the word we want to underline

It's like "you see", "mark my word", "nota bene", "take a look", "you know", "aha!", "there you are!", "what did I tell you!" etc.

учительница-то опоздала = заметь, учительница опоздала.

Originally Posted by mishau_

Historically, '-то' was an article, like 'the'.

Source of your info please? AFAIK, historically, it was a pronoun like "that". In Bulgarian (and in Macedonian, if my memory serves me) it indeed developed into an article. But this is not true for other Slavic languages.

Edit: perhaps it is just a matter of classification. Come to think of it, even in some modern Russian rural dialects this particle is used very much like an article. I think VM posted a couple of examples some time ago.

Edit 2: According to this http://www.speakrus.ru/articles/meje.htm , articles ("член") did not exits in Common Slavic (Pra-slavic), but were developed later in Bulgarian and Macedonian.

As to Russian, "В русском языке наблюдается тенденция развития своего рода постпозитивного члена, тип которого, однако, отличается от болгарского; эта тенденция не достигла завершения, особенно в литературном языке."

Oh. Thanks for expanding i guess. I was only concentrating on the smaller interagatives because thats what i thought he was asking about. But maybe he meant what you said.

Спасибо всем за ответы.
Можете ли вы тоже объяснить эти предложения? Мне много помогло бы.

Куда же приехали-то?

И тогда уж тоже тут, люди-то поняли, в чем дело-то



эх вот очередной вопрос: что значит -с connected to the end of words?

eg
Понимаем-с!

истинная правда-с, только все русские силы даром к себе переводят!

spasibo

explain in english please!

"-c" is obsolete now, it was used to express your respect to the person one is talking to. I read somewhere that it is a shortened form of "сударь" (mister, sir).

Source of your info please?

Грамота.Ру, как водится
a web site for Russians to learn Russian


http://www.gramota.ru/book/village/map25.html

Можете ли вы тоже объяснить эти предложения? Мне много помогло бы.

Можете ли вы также объяснить и эти предложения? Мне здорово помогло бы.

Куда же приехали-то? - exlamation in extreme astonisment (where the dell we are exactly?)

И тогда уж тоже тут, люди-то поняли, в чем дело-то - in this sample there are too many particles. It sounds like "And only then right here people at last understood what exactly was the matter"

Originally Posted by mishau_

Source of your info please?

Грамота.Ру, как водится
a web site for Russians to learn Russian
http://www.gramota.ru/book/village/map25.html

Отличная ссылка!
Да, на Украине -то не часто услышишь.

Originally Posted by mishau_

http://www.gramota.ru/book/village/map25.html

Thank, but, unfortunately, this link doesn't support your statement that "Historically, '-то' was an article, like 'the'"

Именно такое использование местоимения тъ привело к развитию в болгарском языке постпозитивного члена, который есть не что иное, как определенный артикль, ср. болг.: дом – домът, земя – земята, перо – перото.
В северо-восточных и восточных русских диалектах развитие сочетаний существительных и прилагательных с частицей тъ пошло в том же направлении – от частицы к артиклю, однако в русских говорах, в отличие от болгарского языка, частица -то употребляется и с другими частями речи

So, historically, it was a particle, pure and simple, which has later developed—in some languages and dialects—into an article.

All right, I already corrected myself.