Thread: Help with construction

Hi

I want to say:

"The firm where I will be working has offices in Russia".

Currently I'm a bit stuck with how to express this and I have to do it in two chunks:

Фирма где я буду работать [PAUSE] ... у её офисы в Россию.

Can I do:

У фирмы где я буду работать офисы в Россию

Only it doesn't sound quite right.

What is the best way to say this?

спасибо

Originally Posted by justinwyllie

Hi

I want to say:

"The firm where I will be working has offices in Russia".

Currently I'm a bit stuck with how to express this and I have to do it in two chunks:

Фирма где я буду работать [PAUSE] ... у её офисы в Россию.

Can I do:

У фирмы где я буду работать офисы в Россию

Only it doesn't sound quite right.

What is the best way to say this?

спасибо

Hi,

I don't really grasp your objective, Do you want to express the best sentence in English or in Russian ??

Thanks.

LOL. It is possible my English construction is not very good in the first place. But, that aside, what I want to do is find the best possible way of saying:

"The firm where I will be working has offices in Russia"

in Russian.

Thanks

Originally Posted by justinwyllie

LOL. It is possible my English construction is not very good in the first place. But, that aside, what I want to do is find the best possible way of saying:

"The firm where I will be working has offices in Russia"

in Russian.

Thanks

I think the best russian expression of your sentence is :

Компания, где я работаю имеет офисы в России.

Let me know about your opinion, please.

"The firm where I will be working has offices in Russia".

Currently I'm a bit stuck with how to express this and I have to do it in two chunks:

Фирма где я буду работать [PAUSE] ... у её офисы в Россию.

Can I do:

У фирмы где я буду работать офисы в Россию ...

Remember that after prepositions, её and его mean "her" and "his", respectively.
When a third person pronoun is *itself* the object of the preposition, it gets an initial н!

(У неё) ... . - At her -- this one is a complete package, it is a finished prepositional phrase
(У её ...) ... . - At her (blank) -- this one still requires a noun to act as the prepositional object

Horrible example because English has the problem that Russian is avoiding here xD

У него - at him
У его друга - at HIS friend

Also,
в + prepositional - location, in
в + accusative - destination, into

So "в Россию" indicates movement into Russia, rather than location.

Previous suggestion is probably best, but another alternative could be
Компания, в чём я работаю, имеет офисы в России.

Note that whenever a noun is getting an inset description, mostly starting with question words что кто где etc., both sides get marked with a comma so that the reader knows when "we're back on the main road", so to speak.
This is important for maintaining the free word order system.
These inset mini sentences are called subordinate clauses (because if you shave off the rest of the sentence it won't make its own sentence)

Компания, в чём я работаю, имеет офисы в России.

It's most probably my awefully horrible English here. Awefully horrible... Damn, I don't know if these 2 even work together, like at all. In any case, why is everybody here translating "will be working" as работаю? I mean he used a future tense there, right? Meaning he's not working there yet, but will soon, at least to my mangled understanding. The Russian translations say he's already working there.

With that settled here's how I'd say that:

Компания, в которой я буду работать, имеет офисы в России. @chahoub где is also possible there as a clause connector, so to speak or... whatever. Nice job. @xXHoax в чём is not however, it doesn't make sense. Your other points are pretty spot-on though!

There's one thing that I think is worth mentioning. If I was having a friendly converstion, I'd most likely express the idea like this:

У компании, в которой я буду работать, есть офисы в России. That first one I'd reserve for more oficial situations, but that could be just me, so take it with a huge grain of sault. I don't think there is really "the best way to say this" however. There are just... ways.

> Can I do:
> У фирмы где я буду работать офисы в Россию
(in addition to said above) you can omit "has" thing here (translated as "имеет" or "есть" above) ang get:
У фирмы, где я буду работать, офисы в России. This ending is correct here. But this requires more context. You should prefer variants above with "есть" in many cases. For example it's ok to make such omitting in answer to question about this firm or something related to it. Russian language do not like "is" and "has", but at some level they are required.

Oh, I think most of us just accidently glossed over the future tense; I certainly didn't notice that bit.

Interesting that что doesn't work here! Wiktionary considers it "nonstandard" which I guess accounts for its disfunction here.

I believe what makes this construction harder for English speakers is that it says that something is located at 1 abstract spot, that also happens to be a real spot. This is probably a problem because the phrase can literally get rendered as "At (blank) there is (blank).".
So it *feels* like you're saying "At this thing there is an object in this place, but the thing isn't at that place."
Since the company is an abstract space, it's sensible, but if you imagine a person in this construction:
"At John there is a car in Canada." (it's implied by the statement that John is somewhere other than Canada)
One could (somewhat erroneously) think "well if John isn't in Canada, than surely the car *isn't* at him.". Brings to question what it even means to have something. Possessing something without it even being near you.

Originally Posted by xXHoax

..."At (blank) there is (blank)."...

I think it's easier to understand if you suppose that pattern "у(at/of) subject ..." can mean "subject has ...". It's really how I think about it. It's really derived semantically from idea of "something is in some hands", so he is owning it, like in "у него есть"=>"there is something at him/in his (hands)". But probably there is no better way to translate it to english than "he has". Maybe you can say that in russian mind "is" can mean "has" in such contextes, moreover this "is" can be omitted at the same time.

P.S.
Also I thought about next phrases:
ручка -> pen
(его) ручка -> his pen
(у н)его ручка -> he has pen
у него (есть) ручка -> there is pen of him
I would say that in russian these ideas are really links of the same chain. Thoughts are added, not changed, like it is represented in written language too.