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У меня сломалась дверь Topic is solved

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gmads
Mexico

У меня сломалась дверь

Post by gmads »

In dl's comment У мамы кошка и собака, the phrase "У меня сломалась дверь"
is translated as "My door broke," but given that a у-phrase used at the beginning of a sentence may be used to emphasize or remark a characteristic of something, wouldn't it be best to translate it as "My broken door?"


:hash:  ㆍрусский ㆍграмматика ㆍSentenceDiscussion

Last edited by gmads on Mon May 01, 2023 5:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

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DmGabin

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by DmGabin »

«У меня сломалась дверь» is a complete sentence, “My broken door” isn’t, thus, can’t be a translation.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by gmads »

I don't think I would agree with your given argument. The lack of the verb does not change the fact the phrase is remarking the characteristic of being broken, which is the intention of the Russian construct. If a verb is so required, what about, "my door is broken" then? Anyway, I'm ages away in my knowledge of Russian to get into a grammatical debate. It was more a of thought about the possibility of using an adjective instead of a verb.

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duome

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by duome »

my broken door = моя сломанная дверь
my door broke = моя дверь сломалась / у меня сломалась дверь

The difference in English is exactly the difference in Russian, it's either a demonstrative sentence (adjective+noun) or it's a desctipion of what happened (noun+verb).

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gmads
Mexico

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by gmads »

I was now thinking that as in Russian the verb "to be" is omitted in the indicative present tense, there is no actual Russian translation for "my door is broken," which in English is not the same as neither "my broken door" nor "my door broke."

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duome

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by duome »

my broken door - моя сломанная дверь
my door broke - моя дверь сломалась
my door is broken - моя дверь сломана

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Davey944676
Great Britain

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by Davey944676 »

I am a beginner too, but I think I see why there is confusion here. There seem to be two overlapping areas of confusion, so let me try to help in a simple way...

In English, "My door broke" and "My door has broken" both mean the same thing..... "broke" and "has broken" are both past tense verb forms, even though they have words identical to the adjectives "broke" and "broken" .

In Russian from English duolingo lessons we are first taught only that the "У меня" part is used in constructions which mean "I have <something>"......In fact the "У меня" part can also mean ownership in a different way - it can simply mean "My" and can therefore be used instead of "моя".

"У меня сломалась дверь." and "Моя дверь сломалась." therefore both mean the same thing "My door broke/My door has broken", and they both use the past tense feminine verb form "сломалась".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/сломалась

I know that I will have been stating the obvious in parts, but I hope it helps somebody anyway. :)

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gmads
Mexico

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by gmads »

Davey944676 wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:02 am

the past tense feminine verb form "сломалась".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/сломалась

Thanks for the wiktionary reminder. I use it quite, but I missed using it this time: слома́лась, the feminine singular past indicative perfective = broke.

duome wrote: Tue Jun 07, 2022 7:29 am

my door broke = моя дверь сломалась / у меня сломалась дверь

The difference in English is exactly the difference in Russian, it's either a demonstrative sentence (adjective+noun) or it's a desctipion of what happened (noun+verb).

I read that due to grammatical cases, Russian word order is (supposedly) very flexible. Is writing "у меня сломалась дверь" (verb+noun) instead of "у меня дверь сломалась" (noun+verb) an example of this, or does it have to do with having used "у меня" instead of "моя?"

duome wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:00 am

my broken door - моя сломанная дверь
my door is broken - моя дверь сломана

In my native language, Spanish, the usage of cases is limited only to gender and number, thus, Russian is quite interesting regarding this topic.

I just checked: Сломанный - adjective declension, and I have a couple of questions about why each case was chosen.

  • сломанная is the nominative feminine case
  • сломана is the "short" (??) feminine case

So:

  • in "моя сломанная дверь" the case "сломанная" was chosen because "broken" is what is being talked about... or given the emphasis?
  • in "моя дверь сломана" the case "сломана" was chosen because... ??

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duome

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by duome »

"у меня сломалась дверь" = "у меня дверь сломалась" (the first one has pretty even intonation, the second one has a stronger emphasis on the door; word order is very flexible but it's often introducing some intonation changes and thus emphasis to different parts of the sentence)

(это) моя сломанная дверь - (this is) my broken door
моя дверь сломана - my door is broken (or "was broken")

I took in parenthesis what is really (or most likely) meant with each variant.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by gmads »

If I understand correctly, the eighth row of the table shown on the page I referred to earlier...

gmads wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 8:44 pm

Сломанный - adjective declension

... is titled "short" because the listed adjectives are the short (abbreviated) version of those listed under the nominative case?

If that is the case, then choosing to use one ("сломанная") or the other ("сломана") is exactly the same, right?

  • "моя сломанная дверь" = "моя сломана дверь?"
  • "моя дверь сломана" = "моя дверь сломанная?"

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DmGabin

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by DmGabin »

моя сломана дверь

This is grammatically bad (it is pretty much like you say “mi está rota puerta”). Short forms can serve as predicates.

(Note that in the poetry you can find sometimes such patterns, but not in common speech.)

"моя дверь сломана" = "моя дверь сломанная"

"моя дверь сломана" = “mi puerta está rota”

"моя дверь сломанная" = “mi rota puerta” (i. e. an unusual word order, as in Spanish where you normally say “mi puerta rota”)

grzzes@yahoo.com
United States of America

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by grzzes@yahoo.com »

How about I have a broken door

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duome

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by duome »

I have a broken door = у меня есть сломанная дверь

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FrankReynolds69
Germany

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by FrankReynolds69 »

Davey944676 wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:02 am

In Russian from English duolingo lessons we are first taught only that the "У меня" part is used in constructions which mean "I have <something>"......In fact the "У меня" part can also mean ownership in a different way - it can simply mean "My" and can therefore be used instead of "моя".

"У меня сломалась дверь." and "Моя дверь сломалась." therefore both mean the same thing "My door broke/My door has broken", and they both use the past tense feminine verb form "сломалась".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/сломалась

I know that I will have been stating the obvious in parts, but I hope it helps somebody anyway. :)

I think there might be another translation, that wasn't mentioned so far. Considering that "у меня" sometimes is translated as "at my place" implying a missing "места" or "дома", couldn't it be translated as "The door at my place broke" or "A door at my place broke"? In accordance with the literal translations of "у меня" as "with me", "at mine"?

DmGabin

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by DmGabin »

translated as "The door at my place broke" or "A door at my place broke"?

Question: do these phrases sound natural to English speakers?

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Davey944676
Great Britain

Re: У меня сломалась дверь

Post by Davey944676 »

DmGabin wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 7:53 am

translated as "The door at my place broke" or "A door at my place broke"?

Question: do these phrases sound natural to English speakers?

"The door at my place broke (too)" could sound OK as a reply in a specific context.

"The/A door broke at my place" would sound generally more natural to me, perhaps in a conversation about recent storm damage.

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