Thread: Воображаемое Русское Письмо

Originally Posted by impulse

Спасибо за отличный ответ. У мне вопросы.

Ещё текст на русском: Вчера вечером один мой сосед пригласил меня в гости на ужин. (I'm actually confused with this sentence cause I don't know if you wanted to say that one neigbor or neigbors invited you, because you did a really controversial thing, which is using PLURAL after the word ОДИН)

Хорошо. Я понял. Может быть лучше написать "один мой сосед пригласил меня в гости"

That is what I wrote, didn't I?

Originally Posted by impulse

Он и его жена действительно дружелюбны и полезные - this полезные means useful and people don't like to be used, do they?.

Я использовал слово "полезные", чтобы сказать, что они всегда помогают мне. Какой слово может быть правильным?

You can say that they всегда готовы помочь or всегда помогают. Also, there is a nice adjective for that - отзывчивый

Originally Posted by impulse

Я посидел на/в (в sounds better for me. but на is okay too) кресле. The sentence is okay but the logical sequence of events is broken here, because you said that you entered the house, heard some good music playing and saw a dinner table, but you didn't say a word about how the hell you got into that armchair

[COLOR="#FF0000"]Потому что я ленился or мне было лень. Мне ещё очень трудно писать по-русски. Мне нужно много времени, чтобы детально описывать события

Originally Posted by impulse

Мы пообщались/поговорили на разные темы долго полчаса - общаться на разные темы sounds smoother for me somehow than говорить на разные темы. Also, half an hour isn't long


Почему слово "разговаривать" неправильно. Я не понял.
Что разница есть между "пообщаться", "поговорить" и "разговаривать" ?

They basically mean the same thing but what you made was not a mistake of choosing the right word but of choosing the correct verb aspect.

Мы разговаривали о разними темами долго полчаса.

You used imperfective verb there, which is разговаривать, but the flow of your story suggests that you should focus on the result of the action rather than on the duration of it. And for that you have to use a perfective verb, which is поговорить. Basically the imperfective разговаривать pairs the perfective поговорить. So you just mixed up the aspects

Originally Posted by impulse

Ужин состоял из супа, салата, мяса и риса - You need the verb there not a present participle


Но раньше ты писал "Я заказал русский завтрак, состоящий из икры, оладий на кислом молоке, ....."
Здесь ты воспользовался ‘Ужин состоял’. Почему?

Look at this sentence: Я заказал русский завтрак, состоящий из икры, оладий на кислом молоке - it has two parts in it, the first one has the subject, which is я, and the predicate, which is заказал and the first part is the sentence making sense on its own. - Я заказал завтрак makes perfect sense. So it's just a normal sentence.

The second part of the sentence is the причастный оборот (participial clause) and it has no subject and no predicate in it, and this clause doesn't make sense on its own. Состоящий из икры - What is that which consists of caviar? It's not clear like that. So the participial clause is only used to add some additional information to the main clause. Only like that it can make sense.

Я заказал русский завтрак, состоящий из икры - Now it's clear that it is the Russian breakfast which consists of caviar.

Let's take a look at your sentence:

Ужин состоящий из супа, салата, мяса и риса.

Where is the main clause in your sentence? There is none. So you either have to add one or make the participial clause the normal sentence. So I suggested doing the second thing, which is obviously easier to do.

Ужин состоял из супа...

However, now as you have all the information you need let's see how we can make the sentence make sence with the participial clause

Ужин, состоящий из супа и салата, понравился мне.

I hope you see what I mean now and why I did what I did

Я наверняка любил всем - I can't make sense of it, what do you mean? That you definitely loved everything or something else? –

Originally Posted by impulse

I mean “I exactly loved everything”

We don't speak like that in Russian. Just add a word decribing how much you loved the thing

Мне все ОЧЕНЬ/НЕВЕРОЯТНО etc понравилось.

And one more thing, любить doesn't fit in there, because it doesn't really mean to extremely like something if it's used in any other tense rather than the Present tense. In this case it really means to love, not to like, and to love a thing is really creepy in this sense, isn't it?