Thread: "be responsible for"

Originally Posted by iCake

>>4. He is not a responsible parent. He left his child waiting him one hour outside of the school.
Он безответственный отец. Он заставил своего ребёнка целый час ждать себя возле школы

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With all due respect to iCake's Russian version, I think that the usage of себя is not correct here. To me it means that the child was made to wait for himself, which is hard to imagine in real life. I would use его instead of себя.

"в ответе за то, что" basically means to be responsible for something or someone. Two well-known expressions among Russians leap to my mind.

1) Мы в ответе за тех, кого приручили.
2) Пионер - ты за всё в ответе!

Originally Posted by shnuddy

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With all due respect to iCake's Russian version, I think that the usage of себя is not correct here. To me it means that the child was made to wait for himself, which is hard to imagine in real life. I would use его instead of себя.

Formally it is perfectly correct as "себя" refers to the subject of the sentence. But I agree that for the ear of native speaker it can be a bit ambiguous. For the better style I propose to remove reflexive pronoun at all:
Он заставил своего ребёнка целый час ждать возле школы.
Even better:
Он заставил ребёнка целый час ждать возле школы.

Well... if someone needs a literary master-class in Russian...

Well, I am not a great expert of Russian (even though it's my first language), but I doubt that it's perfectly correct in this context, at least. I think "его" is the better alternative. Why? Because if you really wanted to convey the idea of the childing waiting for himself you would definitely use "ceбя", wouldn't you? If it were a movie where the child were traveling in time and were waiting for himself then it would make sense. So, personally, I think "его" eliminates the ambiguity. If you get rid of the pronoun at all then it's now clear who the child was waiting for.

Originally Posted by shnuddy

Well, I am not a great expert of Russian (even though it's my first language), but I doubt that it's perfectly correct in this context, at least. I think "его" is the better alternative. Why? Because if you really wanted to convey the idea of the childing waiting for himself you would definitely use "ceбя", wouldn't you? If it were a movie where the child were traveling in time and were waiting for himself then it would make sense. So, personally, I think "его" eliminates the ambiguity. If you get rid of the pronoun at all then it's now clear who the child was waiting for.

Okay, let's agree to disagree. I go on speaking like that and you go on speaking like you feel you should

The last example which illustrates my point quite well.

How would you say?

1) Я заставил своего ребёнка ждать меня возле школы.
2) Я заставил своего ребёнка ждать себя возле школы.

I would use sentence 1.

PS: My objective is not to argue but to show foreigners that there has some problematic phenomenon been spotted in this sentence.

Originally Posted by shnuddy

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With all due respect to iCake's Russian version, I think that the usage of себя is not correct here. To me it means that the child was made to wait for himself, which is hard to imagine in real life. I would use его instead of себя.

"в ответе за то, что" basically means to be responsible for something or someone. Two well-known expressions among Russians leap to my mind.

1) Мы в ответе за тех, кого приручили.
2) Пионер - ты за всё в ответе!

Don't see anything bad in my sentence. As it-ogo said it may be better to omit себя but it's still not required. As for Он заставил своего ребёнка ждать ЕГО That's really nonsense. Because the question arises immidiately.

Кого его? Because его doesn't refer to the subject, which is он, but refers to somebody else and that somebody isn't mentioned

Originally Posted by iCake

Don't see anything bad in my sentence. As it-ogo said it may be better to omit себя but it's still not required. As for Он заставил своего ребёнка ждать ЕГО That's really nonsense. Because the question arises immidiately.

Кого его? Because его doesn't refer to the subject, which is он, but refers to somebody else and that somebody isn't mentioned

As long as we have only two persons in our sentence any ambiguity is ruled out. You are correct that that somebody isn't mentioned, hence, it would be incorrect to refer to someone who hasn't been mentioned. In this case the only pronoun which can refer to "его" is "он", which is the subject of the sentence.