Thread: мне can be used as мой? Slang?

Покажи is from показать = to show

Originally Posted by yswaq

I was reading lyrics to two songs Номерок блатной and покажи мне любовь and I saw in the lyrics that they were using "мне" in sentences that wouldn't make sense with it there.

Like in Nomerok Blatnoy:
"Папа задарил мне новый Ланд-Ровер."

And, Pokazhi, of course is покажи мне любовь. I guess this means "Bye My Love" or "Go away"

Well I'm just curious. By the way, what exactly does покажи mean? Haven't been able to find English translation anywhere.

As someone mentioned, покажи is the informal imperative of the verb 'to show' показать - Wiktionary.

Мне in both of these contexts acts as an indirect object (IO). The new Land Rover and love are the direct objects (DO).
Subj. Verb IO DO
Папа задарил мне новый Ланд-Ровер.

(Verb) IO DO
покажи мне любовь
(The subject is the unsaid 'you'.)

The indirect object answers the question of 'To whom?' or 'For whom?' You could translate it as such:

Папа задарил мне новый Ланд-Ровер. Dad gave a new Land Rover to me.
покажи мне любовь. Show love to me.

This expresses the same idea, and shows that the function of it in these sentences answers the question of 'To whom?'

Note, however, that if you do throw 'to' in your English translation, it ceases to be the indirect object and instead acts as an object of a preposition (the preposition 'to'). The meaning would be the same, but the grammatical role would be different (in English, Russian makes no distinction with this particular structure).

You can review how мне and the dative case in general are used at this link: http://masterrussian.com/aa070100a.shtml

in this context задарил is peasant speak, avoid it like the plague. however there is a context where задарил is perfectly acceptable: он задарил ее подарками - "he SHOWERED her with presents". however this is not how it's used in the lyrics.