Thread: Чашки / Чашек ?

Learning numbers with Rosetta Stone now

Здесь четыре чашки
Здесь шесть чашек

Why is it "чашки" for four but "чашек" for six?

Thanks,
Lindsay

http://masterrussian.net/f21/whos-af...B%D0%B5-18411/
Everything is discussed in this thread.

Thanks Marcus, so it is. Clearly I need to get cracking on learning cases

Regards,
Lindsay

Yes, but using cases in agreement with numerals in Nominative in Russian has some special quirks.

To try and put it simply:

After the numbers 2, 3, and 4, nouns are in the genitive singular. Adjectives between the number and the noun, however, go into the genitive plural.

три больших книги

After numbers greater than 5 (excluding numbers which end with the digits 1-4), both adjective and nouns go into the genitive plural.

пять больших книг

Тhis rule applies when the number is in the nominative or accusative (inanimate) case.

In other cases, the number and noun both appear in the required case, and the noun is always in the plural.
Это город трёх моих друзей. (Genitive)
Я написал письма двум моим друзьям. (Dative)
Я говорил с двумя моими друзями. (Instrumental)

With regards to 2-4, the pattern of # + adj (gen. pl) + noun (gen. sing) changes in the accusative animate.

Inanimate: две новых машины
Аnimate: двух новых друзей

With accusative animate, both adjectives and nouns go into the genitive plural.
-----------------------------

With that explanation, I'll answer your question directly.

We know now that the number 4 will be followed by a noun in the genitive singular case, and 6 will be followed by a noun in the genitive plural case.

In order to know how to decline the noun into genitive, you have to know the nominative singular form of the noun.

Чашки and чашек are the genitive forms of the word чашка (cup), a feminine noun.

Feminine nouns in the genitive singular are found by dropping the а or я (IF the noun ends in а оr я, but that's a whole different lesson ) and replacing it with ы or и. So чашка becomes чашк and then we have to add the ы, except you can never write ы after a letter к, or any other gutturals (Г, К, Х) or sibilants (Ж, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ц) for that matter (called the 7-letter spelling rule). This yields a genitive singular of чашки.

The genitive plural for feminine nouns is reached by dropping the а or я (this applies to some neuter nouns) and leaving it. However, if this leaves the word ending in a consonant cluster, often times a "fleeting vowel" will appear to break apart the consonants. So the genitive plural чашка would be чашка - а = чашк, but since there's a consonant cluster (шк), which isn't very natural to say, at the end, a fleeting vowel (the e) appears, and you get чашк -> чашек.

Аnother example similar to this word is девушка (girl). Genitive singular would be девушка - а + и = девушки, and the genitive plural would be девушка - а, but since девушк ends in a consonant cluster, you get девушек.

If this sounds hopelessly arbitrary to you, Lindsay, rest assured that there actually was a historic basis for it -- check out the wikipedia article on "Dual Grammatical Number".

In various ancient languages, there were three categories of "grammatical number" for nouns:

Singular = Exactly one of something
Dual = Exactly two of something
Plural = More than two of something

In many modern languages, the "dual number" has mostly been absorbed into the plural -- so in English, "two dogs" and "five dogs" both take the plural verb form "(they) are barking"; there's not a special verb for when there are exactly TWO dogs.

However, even in English, there are a few remnants of the old "dual" category -- for example, our distinction between "neither of these two things" and "none of these three/fifty/thousand things"; or "between the two cities" and "among the three/fifty/thousand cities."

Historically, Slavic languages (including Russian) also had "dual numbers" for when there were exactly two of something. What happened in modern Russian (for some reason) is that when there were exactly three or four items, they got merged into the "dual" category, instead of being "plural" like the numbers five, six, seven, etc.

Again, this won't necessarily make it easier for you to remember, but at least you know there was some historic logic for it, and it's not totally random.

except you can never write ы after a letter к, or any other gutturals (Г, К, Х) or sibilants (Ж, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ц) for that matter (called the 7-letter spelling rule).

There is no such rule. Улицы.

P.S. But here's something that may help you remember:

Imagine an illiterate medieval крестьянин (peasant) trying to count how many apples he has by referring to the number of legs on a cow.

He can count 2, 3, or 4 apples using the legs of just one cow (genitive singular). But to count 5 or more apples, he needs the legs of a second cow (genitive plural)!

I think genetive plural was used with numbers in Old English.

except you can never write ы after a letter к, or any other gutturals (Г, К, Х) or sibilants (Ж, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ц) for that matter (called the 7-letter spelling rule).

Originally Posted by Marcus

There is no such rule. Улицы.

For people learning Russian, there is an important exception to the general idea about not using ы after velars and hushes. For grammatical endings, ы after ц is normal. улицы отцы зайцы.

Otherwise, it is very rare to see ы after velars and hushes. In the list of 50,000 words, only a few appear. I don't know what they all mean, but here is the list. I don't know why they are on the list, I'm just reporting what I found. Some look like they are grammatical plurals квасцы ножницы сенцы уздцы святцы, and so these would normal.

There were no examples of чы шы щы жы.

куцый круглолицый краснолицый бледнолицый белолицый
цыплячий
цыпленок
цыганов
квасцы
святцы
цыган
ножницы
цыбашев
стануцын
цыбулский
цы
люберцы
Голуцын
царицын
сенцы
лисенцын
цыц
уздцы
цыкнуть

кыся
кыргыстан
кыш
викыч
кыпс

хы
гы

After velars vowels are spelled according to pronunciation.

Thanks to everyone once again for their generosity with all the explanations and helpful ideas to remember things (legs on a cow!).

I have been working through the book "Teach Yourself Russian Grammar" and that has helped me a lot. Going back through the exercises in Rosetta Stone I'm now able to deconstruct and understand how and why the word endings are changing - slowly for now but I know it will become second nature in time.

Except I've hit a snag regarding "shoes", but I'll start a separate thread for that.

Thanks,
Lindsay

Originally Posted by Seraph

For people learning Russian, there is an important exception to the general idea about not using ы after velars and hushes. For grammatical endings, ы after ц is normal. улицы отцы зайцы.

Otherwise, it is very rare to see ы after velars and hushes.

There are essentially five words with "цы" in the root: цыган, цыпочки, цыплёнок, цыкнуть, цыц. It seems to be a norm in endings and suffixes (лисицын, куцый) while "и" is an exception. I think the letter is used only in words with "-ция": полиция, акция. I am not sure whether "ций" is part of roots in words like "кальций", "стронций".

P.S. Pronunciation doesn't depend on the spelling in this case.

Originally Posted by Marcus

There is no such rule. Улицы.

There is the rule, I just misstated it. Note I referred to it as the '7-letter spelling rule' but listed eight letters. I added ц in there accidentally.

And yes, as there are to most rules, there are exceptions. But they seem to be few and far between in this instance.

Originally Posted by Marcus

There is no such rule. Улицы.

Кое-что по этому поводу в инете можно найти:

"...Выбор между написаниями ца/ця, цо/цё, цу/цю, ци/цы, це/цэ в одних случаях может определяться произношением, в других — этимологией слова. Так, в исконно русских словах не бывает сочетаний ця, цё, цю, цэ, но в заимствованиях они возможны: хуацяо, Пацёрковский, Цюрих, Цэцэрлэг; в сложных словах также, но обычно со слогоразделом после ц: спецэффект. Что же касается написания цы/ци, то после ц буква ы пишется в следующих случаях:

• в корнях некоторых слов: цыган, цыплёнок/цыпочки/цыпки, цыц/цыкать/цыцкать, цыркать, а также мцыри (нескл.) и в других словах тех же корней (до 1956 года также цынга, цыновка, панцырь, цыфирь, цырюльник и нек. др.); мнемонический способ запоминания слов с цы в начальной школе цыган на цыпочках цыплёнку цыкнул цыц содержит почти все слова, содержащие эту аффрикату с буквой ы в корне слова;
• в суффиксе притяжательных прилагательных -ын после основы на ц: птицын, сестрицын (в фамилиях тут бывает как -ын, так и -ин — в зависимости от того, когда и где предки данного человека обзавелись документами, например: Вицин, Солженицын);
• в окончаниях прилагательных на -ый после основы на ц: белолицый, куцый, -ые, -ы, -ым, -ыми, -ых;
• в окончании -ы существительных после основы на ц: улицы, отцы, лисицы, братцы;
• Во всех остальных случаях после ц пишется и, например: цирк, цифра, цивилизация. "

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ц_(кириллица)

I have no idea what Lampada just said, but I find it inspiring and exciting to know that in a few years I will (all going well!). Thanks to you all for being part of a dream come true for me

Originally Posted by Lampada

мнемонический способ запоминания слов с цы в начальной школе цыган на цыпочках цыплёнку цыкнул цыц содержит почти все слова, содержащие эту аффрикату с буквой ы в корне слова

Heh-heh... cute! (A tiptoeing Gypsy said "Tsyts!" to a baby chicken.)

If I understand Ozhegov correctly, "цыц" basically signifies "Прекрати!" ("Stop doing that!")

I'd never heard this word before, but it's quite funny to me, because there was a South Park episode entitled "Tsst!" in which Mrs. Cartman hires a professional dog-trainer to bring Eric's bad behavior under control. The dog-trainer's methodology is to continuously poke Cartman's neck saying Tsst! Tsst! Tsst! whenever Cartman misbehaves -- and it works!


Цыц!

That episode of South Park was spoofing Cesar Milan ("The Dog Whisperer"), who uses that technique on dogs in real life - in fact, we use it on our own dog and it works well

Lindsay -- the main point of what Lampada wrote had to do with the written vowels that can follow the consonant ц. The letter combinations ця, цё, цю, цэ are never found in native Russian words, while the combination цы is relatively rare and found only in certain circumstances -- namely (1) in certain grammatical suffixes, such as in улицы, the nom. pl. of улица, "street"; and (2) about a half-dozen words that have цы- not in their grammatical endings, but in the word-root itself -- such as цыплёнок, "baby chicken." (Incidentally, you'll see that -ёнок ending again and again in words that refer to baby animals: котёнок = kitten; китёнок = baby whale; and of course ребёнок = human child.)

But in most other cases, when you hear the sound combination цы, in writing it will be spelled ци. For example, the word for "circus" is pronounced like цырк, but the written spelling is actually цирк.

Originally Posted by Lindsay

That episode of South Park was spoofing Cesar Milan ("The Dog Whisperer"), who uses that technique on dogs in real life - in fact, we use it on our own dog and it works well

Apparently, Milan's show is also popular in Russia, where it's called Переводчик с собачьего -- which basically means "The Translator Who Speaks Doglish".

More literally, it means "Translator from Dog (language)" -- the word языка is logically understood but not used. And "собачьего языка" is in the genitive singular, because as I mentioned in your "shoes" thread, one of the functions of the genitive is to indicate "away from." In the case of translations, one goes "away from" the source language (genitive) and "into" the target language (accusative) -- с французского на китайский (from French to Chinese), or с собачьего на человеческий (from "Doglish" to "Humanese").