16
Yes, it is quite common in conversational speech:
Он знает английский. = He knows English.
Она предпочитает русский. = She prefers Russian.
Note that language names or nationalities are not capitalised in Russian. Neither are months or days or the week.
15
The aspects of difference:
Пища из more formal version of еда in the meaning 'food'.
Unlike пища, еда can be used directly in the meaning 'having meals'. e. g.:
(разговаривать) во время еды
The formal (medical, dietological) version of "еда" here would be "приём пищи" ("во время приёма пищи"), not simply "пища".
Unlike "еда", "пища" can be used ...
14
As an addition to @Artemix' answer, here's a picture of what a подъезд looks like. Usually buildings have several of them, they are counted from left to right, so the leftmost arrow points to the первый подъезд, the next one is второй подъезд, etc.
13
You just leave it as is. Like 'deer' in English - "One deer", "many deer", etc.
У неё уже есть три пальто - зачем ей ещё одно?
Он может делать два сальто подряд.
На столе лежат два портмоне.
12
Это зависит от смысла того, что вы хотите сказать.
Если речь идёт о мыслях, то нужно использовать местный падеж:
В моём мозгу крутилась мысль о сдаче в плен.
В моём мозгу я уже раздевал любимую.
Использование предложного падежа здесь неправильно.
Если речь идёт в химическом составе мозга, нейронах, либо о пользе/вреде мозга, то используется предложный ...
12
It is hard to make a judgement for all entirety of the language (one should probably do a search in a large computer dictionary or a large corpus).
However, you can tackle it from the other side: which of the two you are going to encounter more often. According to frequency dictionaries, feminine nouns are the majority of the most used Ь-ending nouns (I am ...
12
Apart from putting the adjective into the feminine gender to adjust it to the feminine noun остановка, you also have to put the resulting word combination into the Accusative case, because the preposition на needs the following noun phrase to be in the Accusative case, if it is about the direction to the place. That is why the correct way to say it is:
1) ...
12
I think яблони refers to the apple trees while яблоки refers to the apples.
12
There's no grammatical rule in Russian that specifies city name generation based on person names. It's rather random or based on historical context.
For example, in early soviet times Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Stalino (now Donetsk) and Stalinsk (now Novokuznetsk) existed simultaneously.
11
You are right that Лора declines in Russian, and here are the rules (source: http://www.nazovite.ru/sklonenie/)
The following personal names decline:
all names (masculine and feminine, Russian and non-Russian) which end in -а or -я. This is your case.
masculine names which end in any consonant (согласный), including -й.
Feminine names which end in -ь (...
10
Both forms are correct.
The "accent" is a stress mark. Stress marks are omitted in most books. They are printed in books for beginner readers, and in words where a change of stress would change the meaning.
9
I believe the translations could be:
Конструктор or Инженер-конструктор (means a person who designs machine parts and draws technical images)
Чертежник (means a person who draws technical images)
9
Its "communal entrance hallway" or "entrance of an apartment building".
Other synonym is "парадное".
One building can have multiple entrances which lead to a different parts of a building.
Мы живем в одном подъезде.
"We use common entrance to the apartment building".
Моя квартира -- в четвертом подъезде на третьем этаже.
"My apartments are in the ...
9
The word "деньга́" is ancient and rare, although it might be used as a colloquial or a joke.
In this (seemingly ordinary) case the word "де́ньги" was the original form, no doubt.
9
It's a complicated matter, and as a native speaker I'm lucky not to think about it consciously.
Typically, when a person is named after an inanimate object, the word behaves as if it were animate all along, so the option
Не хочу учить валенков / лаптей / чурок
is the correct one.
When it's the other way round, things get more complicated. I'd say ...
9
There is the word питомец (etymologically, "the one being fed"), but
it has other meanings, it's less popular than домашнее животное, and, if anything, it's more bookish.
In compound words, it's sometimes replaced with the root зоо-: зоомагазин "pet store", зоотовары "pet supplies" etc.
Russian, as well as many other languages ...
8
Though the word Биток exists as a separate word (see below), this particular saying (набить битком) is similar to others like "бежать бегом" "сидеть сиднем", "волочь волоком" (see more details here).
This form of word is tautological enforcement of the idea of packing something very tightly. "Бежать бегом" means "run very fast", "сидеть сиднем" - sit ...
8
Я протестировал слова из открытого корпуса Open Corpora.
Из 7784 слов-существительных, оканчивающихся на "ь", 5632 были женского рода (72%). Список слов сохранил в архиве
I tested words from open corpus Open Corpora.
There was 7784 noun words ending with "мягкий знак" and 5632 of them was feminine (72%). I saved results in archive.
8
It sounds like a nonce word, but is quite understandable in that meaning. Maybe something like "забывала" (запевала, заводила, зазывала, вышибала), "забывальщик" or "забывальщица" when used between friends would sound less offensive since "забывало" reminds of such typical words as "быдло", "хамло", "мурло" etc.
However, the difference between "забывало" and ...
8
You're on the right track, but the meaning is more abstract than "friends list"; it's more like the "state of being a friend" in general. Compare записать в члены общества, вывести в генералы, etc. It seems to be one of the "lesser cases" in Russian (like the partitive-genitive выпить чаю and the locative-prepositional в снегу). I might call it translative-...
8
"И беспечной птицей" is indeed in an instrumental case - it answers the question "Улетаешь кем?" - птицей.
To better understand why it is so, think of this phrase as of something with hidden verb which is not used but sort of is implied:
Улетаешь [прикинувшись/обернувшись/cтав] кем?
There are actually some other phrases constructed similarly, like in:
...
8
Both nominative plural and genitive plural adjectives can be used with feminine nouns. Nominative plural is preferred.
Lisa, you are not the first to notice this variation (and well done spotting it!).
Most sources use language such as 'usually', 'more often', 'genitive is preferred', etc. when describing this phenomenon. Here is a quote from Rosenthal:
...
8
Yes, in Russian, the name of the nationality is usually different from the name of the language. That's because nationalities are nouns, English often has the same difference: nationality is Pole, but the language is Polish, Spaniard and Spanish, Swede and Swedish.
The languages are usually named with adjectives, but that's simply because the word "...
7
Only marked ones, formed with suffixes -ина and similar: домина, голосина, дождина etc.
7
Formally speaking, Справочник по правописанию и стилистике (§ 28. Условные имена собственные) says that such words as Родина, Отчизна, Человек, Вера are capitalized in a special stylistic use. An example of "special stylistic use" is Высокий стиль which implies that a text has some ceremonial, dramatic, theatrical color.
So the word Родина is capitalized ...
7
Родина means "place of birth". So it's valid word for both Motherland and Motherworld. Other valid translation of Motherworld is родной мир. If Motherworld is planet than родная планета is valid too.
7
Сожитель indeed has some negative connotation for me. It doesn't mean "lover" in a sense that it is a partner for a married person, but it simply means people living together and having a relationship while not being officially married. I would usually see it in official sources (news etc.), which often report some negative occurrences and thus lead to this ...
7
It is instrumental case indeed.
One of the functions of instrumental in Russian is conveying sense of similarity. Usually it can be replaced with an analytical construct with как ("like"):
Время летит стрелою (как стрела) // Time flies like an arrow
Я волком (как волк) бы выгрыз бюрократизм // I'd tear like a wolf at bureaucracy
Russian adverbs ...
7
Еда means food, meal
Пища means food, nourishment
While these two words are often synonyms, you can think of the difference between "meal" and "nourishment" to understand the difference between "еда" and "пища".
6
В области компьютерных единиц измерения остается много подобных несоответствий, поскольку это инженерная дисциплина, а не научная. Поэтому номенклатура исторически создавалась похожей на научную, но с научной точки зрения развивалась "неправильно".
В последнее время есть последовательные шаги в сторону стандартизации номенклатуры (например новые названия "...
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