Thread: Lesson 13 questions

Hello all,

I'm working through Ben T. Clark's Russian on my own and have some questions.

In this sentence Садись в автобус, is автобус here in the accusative case? It seems it should be in the prepositonal case, автобусе, unless the sense is "go into the bus and sit down". Am I missing something here?

Also for translations:"I very much want to see Red Square..."-- is this я очень хочу посмотреть?...It seems awkward to me.

"I like Yalta much more than Sochi".--I don't think I've learned this expression yet, "like much more"

"Did you go there by plane?"--is this Ты там летал?

Thanks for any help,
Z

Originally Posted by zorro

unless the sense is "go into the bus and sit down".

This is exactly the meaning

Originally Posted by zorro

Also for translations:"I very much want to see Red Square..."-- is this я очень хочу посмотреть?...It seems awkward to me.

я очень хочу посмотреть Красную Площадь
nothing awkward

Originally Posted by zorro

"I like Yalta much more than Sochi".--I don't think I've learned this expression yet, "like much more"

"I like Yalta much more than Sochi" - Я люблю Ялту намного больше чем Сочи (Me too, BTW)

Originally Posted by zorro

"Did you go there by plane?"--is this Ты там летал?

Ты прилетел туда на самолёте? (perfective is required, because the action has been completed)

Originally Posted by zorro

Hello all,
I'm working through Ben T. Clark's Russian on my own and have some questions.
In this sentence Садись в автобус, is автобус here in the accusative case? It seems it should be in the prepositonal case, автобусе, unless the sense is "go into the bus and sit down". Am I missing something here?

Originally Posted by Doomer

This is exactly the meaning

It does not even imply that one will take a seat. "Садитесь в автобус" just means "Take the bus" or "Go into the bus". There can be even no free seats available, and one might have to stand in the bus. "Садиться в автобус/трамвай/поезд/самолёт" (imperfective) or "сесть в автобус/трамвай/поезд/самолёт" (perfective) is just the expression for boarding a vehicle.

Note. If it is a ship, then the preposition "на" is used: "садитесь на корабль".

BTW, we also can use "на" for other vehicles, like "садитесь на автобус/трамвай/поезд/самолёт".

I think there is a simple explanation for this.
In earlier times, there were no mechanical vehicles, and the only way of transportation were horses. The verb "ездить/ехать" originally assumed riding a horse. The same is for the English verb "to ride". The same way, "садиться/сесть" was applied to climbing a horse. And then, after first vehicles were invented, it started being used for them metaphorically.

Originally Posted by Doomer

я очень хочу посмотреть Красную Площадь
nothing awkward

I'm just curious: what exactly do you find awkward here, Zorro?

Originally Posted by Doomer

"I like Yalta much more than Sochi" - Я люблю Ялту намного больше чем Сочи (Me too, BTW)

+ 1

Other options:
Я люблю Ялту гораздо больше чем Сочи.
Мне Ялта нравится намного больше чем Сочи.
Мне Ялта нравится гораздо больше чем Сочи.

Originally Posted by zorro

"Did you go there by plane?"--is this Ты там летал?

Ты туда летал? - It is direction, not static location.

Originally Posted by Doomer

"Ты прилетел туда на самолёте? (perfective is required, because the action has been completed)

Why? It depends on the context.

Ты туда летал? - is perfectly OK.
Ты прилетел туда на самолёте? - is more like "Did you arrive there by plane?"

Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман

Ты туда летал? - It is direction, not static location.

I think your translation is incorrect

Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман

Why? It depends on the context.

I don't think it does

Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман

Ты туда летал? - is perfectly OK.

I don't think so

Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман

Ты прилетел туда на самолёте? - is more like "Did you arrive there by plane?"

Agree, more precise translation will be - Ты летел туда на самолёте?

Originally Posted by Doomer

I think your translation is incorrect

Why do you think it is incorrect!?

Imagine you are a pilot of a plane. You fly to many different destinations.
And we are talking about Hawaii, for example.
I wonder if you have already flown there. And I ask: "А ты туда уже летал?" or simply "Ты туда летал?"

Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман

Why do you think it is incorrect!?

Because "Ты туда летал?" can be translated as "Have you flown there?"
First of all it doesn't have the word "plane" and second the question presumes that it is unknown if the person ever flown "there", however original question specifically implies that person been, in fact, in the place but it is unclear what transportation has been used - "Did you go there by plane?"

Either meaning is correct. By default it's Bob Whiteman's but the additional one is Doomer's. Also there can be a joke like this:
- Ты был в Египте?
- да
- Ты туда летал?
- Нет, блин, ходил!

Originally Posted by Doomer

Because "Ты туда летал?" can be translated as "Have you flown there?"
First of all it doesn't have the word "plane" and second the question presumes that it is unknown if the person ever flown "there", however original question specifically implies that person been, in fact, in the place but it is unclear what transportation has been used - "Did you go there by plane?"

I think you misunderstand what Zorro meant. Zorro wrote: "Did you go there by plane?"--is this Ты там летал?
I hope we both agree that the use of "там" is definitely incorrect, it should be "туда".

However, you think that the question was about the means of transportation. I do not think so. As you see, there is no word for "plane" (самолёт) in the translation proposed by Zorro. And I do not think it is because Zorro does not know how to say "самолёт" in Russian. I see another reason for that:

Zorro just meant the question "Did you go there?". However, the foreigners are taught the following way: the translation of the verb "to go" into Russian depends on the means of transportation used. They learn: "to go by foot" - "идти/ходить", "to go by car (or any other ground transportation)" - "ехать/ездить", "to go by plane" - "лететь/летать". So, Zorro specified "by plane" not because it was a part of the question, but just in order to make it clear which verb should be used: "Did you go there? (by plane)" - "Ты туда летал?"

That's how I understand the question.

However, dependimg on the context, other translations are possible:
- Ты туда летал? (if a whole round trip is in focus)
- Ты туда летел? (if a one-way trip in its process is in focus)
- Ты туда полетел? (if the decision to go is in focus)
and some other possibilities as well.

That's why I wrote the context is required.

Originally Posted by Doomer

Because "Ты туда летал?" can be translated as "Have you flown there?"

Agree. And I guess that is what the question was about.

Originally Posted by Doomer

second the question presumes that it is unknown if the person ever flown "there"

Yes. It is how I understand it.

Originally Posted by Doomer

however original question specifically implies that person been, in fact, in the place but it is unclear what transportation has been used

It is not clear from the original question. But the translation proposed by Zorro gives a clue: there's no word for "plane", so it's not the logical center of the question, it's just to define the verb choice for "to go".

Let's Zorro judge Maybe my interpretation is wrong, in fact?

Sorry it has taken so long to respond. I appreciate all your help and thoughtful discussion. I've been without internet service for a while and then came the hurricane.

The sentence "Did you go there by plane?" came from a translation excercise with a series of sentences. The sentences preceding the one I asked about are, "Have you ever been in the south of the USSR? Yes, I was six days in Yalta. I like Yalta much more than Sochi.", then, "Did you go there by plane?" Would that still be Ты туда летал?

Z

Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман

я очень хочу посмотреть Красную Площадь

I'm just curious: what exactly do you find awkward here, Zorro?

I'm a beginner so anything I write that isn't based on something I've seen before, I suspect it's not real "Russian". I searched back through the chapter for some guidance and I wonder if я там хочу посмотреть Красную Площадь is more natural, or is there no difference?

Z

Originally Posted by zorro

I'm a beginner so anything I write that isn't based on something I've seen before, I suspect it's not real "Russian". I searched back through the chapter for some guidance and I wonder if я так хочу посмотреть Красную Площадь is more natural, or is there no difference?

I guess it sounds awkward to you because we say "I very much want" in English, but "I very want" is impossible?

Rest assured that я очень хочу is totally fine. Similarly, you can say очень ждать -- literally, "to very wait" -- as a translation for "to await eagerly" or "to very much look forward to." E.g., Я очень жду твоё письмо, "I can hardly wait to get your letter."

P.S. But я так хочу, "I so want...", is also fine.

Originally Posted by zorro

"Did you go there by plane?" Would that still be Ты туда летал?

Summing up what Bob and Doomer have said, note that Ты туда летал? has more than one possible answer:

Да, на самолёте. "Yes, [I flew] by airplane."
Нет, на вертолёте*. "No, [I flew] by helicopter."
Нет, я ездил на поезде. "No, [I went] by train."

So you could phrase the question as Ты туда летал? if the questioner wants to know whether the person traveled by air or by land or by water. If it's known that the traveler flew, but the questioner doesn't know whether it was in an airplane, helicopter, hot-air balloon, alien spacecraft, etc., then Ты туда летал на самолёте? would be the appropriate phrasing. You could even say Ты туда ездил на самолёте?, using the more generic verb for travelling-by-vehicle, instead of the verb "to fly".

* P.S. The root -верт- means "spin; rotate", by the way -- so a вертолёт is basically "a thing that flies by spinning", while самолёт is basically "a self-flying thing")

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

I guess it sounds awkward to you because we say "I very much want" in English, but "I very want" is impossible?

Rest assured that я очень хочу is totally fine. Similarly, you can say очень ждать -- literally, "to very wait" -- as a translation for "to await eagerly" or "to very much look forward to." E.g., Я очень жду твоё письмо, "I can hardly wait to get your letter."

P.S. But я так хочу, "I so want...", is also fine.

I just want to add that there is a slight difference between "Я очень хочу ..." and "Я так хочу ...". The former one is a neutral expression equivalent to the English "I very much want", as Throbert McGee wrote.
The latter one is more emotional, it's like an exclamation: "Я так хочу ...!"

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

You could even say Ты туда ездил на самолёте?, using the more generic verb for travelling-by-vehicle, instead of the verb "to fly".

Sorry, but I think "ездить на самолёте" is too awkward. I would hardly ever say it like that. We say "я ездил на поезде", but "я летал на самолёте".
Yes, the verb "ездить" can be used as a generic verb if the means of transportation is not mentioned at all. So, I can say "я ездил в Америку" (I travelled to the US) regardless if a used a plain, a train or a boat to get there. We do say it like this, imagine a possible dialogue:
- Ты был в Нью-Йорке?
- Да, я ездил туда в прошлом году.
- На машине?
- Нет, я летал на самолёте.

But if travelling by air is explicitly mentioned, then "ездить" sounds strange. At least to me.

I checked yandex (the Russian search engine):
"летал на самолёте" - 50,000 occurrences, "ездил на самолёте" - 264 occurrences (I only searched for the fixed expression by using the quotation marks). So, someone may use it occasionally, but I would not recommend.

Я никогда в жизни не скажу "ездил на самолёте", и никогда не слышал. Думаю это звучит абсолютно не по-русски.

Боб правильно сказал, ездить - если имеется в виду средство передвижения на колёсах (корабли тоже не в счёт), либо когда вообще не указывается средство передвижения.

На самолете можно ездить. Только сперва крылья нужно отрезать, а то неудобно.