Thread: My Russian is worse than I thought...

This line baffle me??? Uhh Why is народ in the dative case?!

На улицах много народу.

Not dative, but the partative. I don't know, I can't explain it. I takes the position of the genetive somethimes.

So this is the same idea as saying, for instance "я ел меду," right? You didn't eat ALL of the honey, but only part of it. I guess the idea here is that it is alot of the nation/people but it's still only part of that single, collective overall group.

Here's a link about partitive genitive.
http://russianmentor.net/Ru_xx/Misc/partgen.html

I believe this a remnent of something which still exists in Ukrainian, where the genitive case endings for masculine nouns are А / Я or У/ Ю.

The У/ Ю ending tends to be used for abstract nouns, or incomplete objects, whereas the А / Я is for complete objects, people, etc.

E.g. Cтруктура фільму - Structure of the film.

If I said Фільма this would mean the physical film reel. фільму is the film as an absract concept, that is the thing you watch, not the plastic material that holds the information.

Чаю in Ukrainian would be the standard masculine genitive. Well obviously, since if you ask someone for a cup of tea, you aren;t asking for all the tea, only some, so yes it is still partitive.

I'm not sure if Russian ever had this full use of the У/ Ю.


Choosing the right ending is often a source of confusion even for native speakers.

Originally Posted by TATY

... Choosing the right ending is often a source of confusion even for native speakers.

True.

Well thanks very much guys. All very helpful.

Originally Posted by basurero

Not dative, but the partative. I don't know, I can't explain it. I takes the position of the genetive somethimes.

Just to clarify the partitive is part of the genitive case and not separate, hence usually being called the "genitive partitive". It is just a different ending used to express a certain idea.

I asked this same question about the same word to a Russian friend of mine .........and got no definite answer.

It ain't learnt at school. The low talk.