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Possession (to have) in Russian & Hebrew | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| TheCat Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6754 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew, Russian*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 1 of 9 29 May 2006 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello,
First of all, I'm new here. I live in Canada and speak fluently English, Hebrew, and Russian. After expressing interest in languages, I have especially enjoyed looking at the grammars of many languages. At this stage I have also started to notice some interesting grammatical features in the languages I speak fluently and usually take for granted. One interesting feature I notice is the expression of "having" in Russian and Hebrew. Although while Hebrew completely lacks a concrete verb "to have", Russian has such a verb ("imet"), Russian does not usually use this verb when expressing possession. What is even more interesting, is that both languages express it in a very similar way, and an important word is also very similar in both languages (I'll explain in a second). Essentially, in both languages, it is usual to say "to X there is Y", or "there is Y to X" (the word order is somewhat different normally, though is not strictly fixed). E.g., to say, "I have a computer.", in Russian: "U menya yest komputer." in Hebrew: "Yesh li makhshev (computer)." First of all, it is interesting that the word that means "there is" = "yest" (in Russian) = "yesh" (in Hebrew). Also, "li"="to me" in Hebrew, and "U menya" cannot be precisely translated to English, because "U" does not have a direct equivalent. It indicates something like "to" or "at", but not quite. "Menya" is simply the accusative form of "Ya" (I). But nevertheless, "U menya yest" more or less corresponds to "To me (or, in my possession), there is...". Sorry if this is nonsense, just something I find interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7146 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 2 of 9 29 May 2006 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Welcome top the forum.
I too have noticed the similarity. I would translate U menya as "at me", so it would be, at me is a computer. I would translate the Hebrew the same way. It could mean, there is to me a computer. I am intrigued by the way different languages express ideas. I think it can give insight into the way the people think. I like to begin study of a language by reading about the grammar and the basic way a language is constructed. I was one of the weirdos at school who enjoyed grammar and who was disappointed when it was dropped from the syllabus. Edited by fanatic on 29 May 2006 at 8:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Qbe Tetraglot Senior Member United States joewright.org/var Joined 7135 days ago 289 posts - 335 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Japanese, German, Mandarin, Aramaic | Message 3 of 9 29 May 2006 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In classical Greek and Latin this construction is called the dative of possession. Both languages had verbs expressing the idea "to have", but also used this construction. Edited by Qbe on 29 May 2006 at 10:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| awb Groupie United States Joined 6874 days ago 46 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 4 of 9 30 May 2006 at 11:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can't claim to be very advanced in Russian (wish I had more time the past couple months, but been busy with school/etc.), but in one of my Russian books, I thought it said it's a wording something like "by you are there children?" I kind of imagine it would be like a construction of "Gibt es bei Ihnen Kinder?" though you could definitely say "Haben Sie Kinder?" as well.
Bei generally means something like with or at the place of. Anyway, looking in the Russian book, it says:
Edited by awb on 30 May 2006 at 11:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TheCat Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6754 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew, Russian*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 5 of 9 30 May 2006 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Interesting, I would never translate it quite like this (i.e. "By you is..."). Yest = "there is". For example, if I just say "Yest komputer.", it means "There is (or there exists) a computer.". Originally it also meant (and still does in certain contexts) simply the verb "to be" in the present tense, but it is no longer used (in the present tense, that is).
Of course, "by you" can mean several things in English. For example, it can mean "near/at the side of you", which i suspect is approximately what your books means. However, to me, "by you" can also mean "using you", which in Russian is expressed using the instrumental case (i.e. "Vami"="Using you"), or, using the familiar "Ti" (which is what I used in my original post) it would be "Taboy". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6867 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 6 of 9 04 June 2006 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Both mean "I have", so what's the problem? You can't be more direct than that! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TheCat Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6754 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew, Russian*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 7 of 9 09 June 2006 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
I was just providing a literal word-by-word translation of my examples. And, no, "li" and "u menya" don't actually mean the exact same thing, although of course their usage in possession with the further addition of "there is/are" is virtually the same. "li" in fact translates as "mnye" in Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 8 of 9 09 June 2006 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Japanese also has no verb "to have". Often, you use the verb "to exist".
"Person" (topic marker) + "Thing" (subject marker) + "exists" 1 person has voted this message useful |
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