Thread: Question about "быть" (and a couple other unrelated questions)

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

in SPEECH, it's generally better to use a который clause in most cases, because using a participle would sound overly bookish.

1. Мальчику снился сон о говорящей обезьяне.
(The boy had a dream about a talking monkey.)

2. Мальчику снился сон об обезьяне, говорящей по телефону.
(The boy had a dream about a monkey talking on the telephone.)

The first sentence (with the participle functioning as an adjective) would be totally normal in colloquial speech, but my guess is that the second sentence (with the participle introducing a subordinate clause) would be less common in speech, and instead people would be more likely to use a relative clause with который:

3. Мальчику снился сон об обезьяне, которая говорит по телефону.
(The boy had a dream about a monkey, who was talking on the telephone.)

Hello! I think you are quite right. Причастия и деепричастия sounds bookish in speech. We don't say "автомобиль, едущий на красный свет" (a car going on a red light) or "выйдя на улицу, я увидел..." (having left the house I saw...) we say rather "автомобиль, который ехал на красный свет" and "когда я вышел на улицу, я увидел..."

By the way "Город был разрушен при землетрясении" "The city was destroyed in the earthquake.