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Help with a dative example? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Русский |  | |
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5217 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 1 of 10 06 March 2014 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hi, this will be simpler for me if I write in English. This sentence came up in my learning:
(from http://learnrussian.rt.com/tests/test-5/ ... the underlined part is given as the correct answer) My interpretation: A young director needs to work a lot to become an old director. I was confused both by the dative for the first part and the instrumental for the last. I would have chosen nominative for both. Consultation with my somewhat cryptic dictionary suggests that нужен requires dative, well this is news to me. Is it also true that стать requires instrumental (dictionary not helpful here), and do these cases apply all the time or only in certain situations? Any more very common verbs with required cases that I should be on the lookout for? (I'm guessing lots, but feel free to name your favourites.) Overall I was quite pleased with that RT test as I scored 98% (with one eye on my cheat sheet). This was definitely a trick question though! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4262 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 2 of 10 06 March 2014 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Weird sentence from the point of having sense, I must say.
Нужно много работать (кому?) - молодому директору. Кому? is a question, usual for dative. Работать, чтобы стать (кем?) - старым директором. Кем? is one of the questions, usual for instrumental. I don't think it's about verbs (though I can be mistaking). First part looks like passive, which has no subject, hence we can't use nominative case. Second part also has no subject: we do not say who is trying to become and old director, and "an old director" itself can't be a subject as well. So It's not even possible to use nominative here. I can guess why you were tempted to put "a young director" in nominative, from the structure of English sentence it looks just alright. But "an old director" is object even in your translation, so it's not clear to me why you wanted to use nominative. Edited by Via Diva on 06 March 2014 at 3:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5627 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 3 of 10 06 March 2014 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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a) (кому) (не) нужно + infinitive
E.g. Тебе надо будет купить слобарь. Врачу не надо приезжать. Нам надо идти. b)You use the instrumental case for the predicative noun: Он работает инженером Она станет чемпионкой Это является важным вопросом 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5084 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 4 of 10 06 March 2014 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Questions do not help foreigners, they are used for native speakers to determine the case of the correct form. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4667 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 5 of 10 06 March 2014 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One of the things my Russian teacher keeps repeating is that we who have German or Latin native languages need to switch our mentality to the fact that Russian loves "impersonal" constructions. By that I mean that what you would normally see as the subject in English or French (and therefore put in the nominative) is often the object in the equivalent Russian sentence, and will therefore come in another case.
In your example, as Cabaire also points out, нужно is impersonal and what for you is the subject if you tranlsate into English "young director" has to be put in dative case. As for the second part of the sentence, the rule is quite simple. You will put the predicative in the instrumental case except in one case (as far as I know), which is when you use the simple structure "I (am a) director", which in Russian of course is: "Я - директор." Apart from verbs which require certain cases (and which you will have to learn as you come accross them), be aware that it may be the sentence construction itself that will decide which case to use. For instance, with the verb "to be", "есть", you would say in the affirmative "Она была дома", using the nominative case of "she". However, in a negation, you will have to put "She" in the genitive case and the verb in neutral, thus: "Ее не было дома". 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6625 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 10 06 March 2014 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Um, Germanic languages love this even more? It's similar to the it-sentences in English, like "it took the young director many years to become an old director".
Also note that director is the headperson. Not a movie director, which is режиссёр. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4735 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 7 of 10 06 March 2014 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The difference is that English, Dutch etc usually require a dummy word, whereas Russian
can just plonk the impersonal construction without the need for "it is, there is" etc. Btw, a nice poem that illustrates how negation is used with copula verbs in Russian: 
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5217 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 8 of 10 07 March 2014 at 1:46am | IP Logged | |||||
Very good answer. I have heard of these predicate nouns but did not know they should usually go in the instrumental case. This is not even mentioned anywhere in Kemple's "Essential Russian Grammar"! I did notice another interesting rule in that book, which sort of complements what you just taught me:
Another piece of the grammatical jigsaw comes out from under the sofa of ignorance... Edited by chokofingrz on 07 March 2014 at 1:47am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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