Немно́го о языке́ 9.5 Са́мое глубо́кое о́зеро в ми́ре
Durations of time
From our story you know that both Amanda and Tony have made trips which could be summarized in the sentences below:
| То́ни е́здил в Петербу́рг на пять дней. |
| Ама́нда е́здила в Москву́ на четы́ре дня. |
| Ке́йтлин и её роди́тели е́здили на Гава́йи на неде́лю. |
When talking about the length of time one will be at the destination of a trip, we use the preposition на with the accusative case of the time expression.
If we talk about the length of time in route to a destination (i.e., riding in a train from Petersburg to Moscow; flying from Ohio to Hawaii), then we will use accusative time expressions without the preposition на.
Упражне́ние 1
Pick the meaning that the sentence reflects. Note how the verbs of motion combine with these different time expressions.
Softening expressions of wanting
In many contexts you can express your desire for something with the verb хотеть, although this can sometimes express a very strong sense of will and wanting. Russians often modify that expression to “would like to” by combining the past-tense forms of хотеть with the conditional particle бы. Compare the sentences below.
| Дени́с хо́чет познако́мить Ама́нду с роди́телями. | Denis wants to introduce Amanda to his parents. | Дени́с хоте́л бы познако́мить Ама́нду с роди́телями. | Denis would like to introduce Amanda to his parents. |
| Ама́нда хо́чет купи́ть Же́не пода́рок. | Amanda wants to buy Zhenya a present. |
| Ама́нда хоте́ла бы купи́ть Же́не пода́рок. | Amanda would like to buy Zhenya a present. |
| Студе́нты хотя́т пойти́ на спекта́кль. | The students want to go to the show. |
| Студе́нты хоте́ли бы пойти́ на спекта́кль. | The students would like to go to the show. |
| Я хочу́ обе́дать. | I want to eat lunch. |
| Я хоте́л бы обе́дать. | I would like to eat lunch. |
после́дний and other soft stem adjectives
Back in Unit 2, you first put adjectives together with nouns and learned to make adjectives agree with those nouns in gender and number. The adjectives that you met in that unit had basic endings for stems that end in a hard consonant (like но́в-ый, ста́р-ый, интере́сн-ый). Alternative endings were due to stress (like молод-о́й, дорог-о́й, как-о́й) and Russian spelling rules (большо́е and хоро́шее).
While the overwhelming majority of adjectives use these basic hard endings, Russian has a small group of “soft” adjectives, whose stems end in a soft н. Some common “soft” adjectives are:
| после́дний – last (stem: после́дн- ий) |
| си́ний – dark blue (stem: си́н-ий) |
| нового́дний – New Year’s (stem: нового́дн-ий) |
| дре́вний – ancient (stem: дре́вн- ий) |
| вече́рний – evening (stem: вече́рн-ий) |
| у́тренний – morning (stem: у́тренн-ий) |
In soft adjectives the final н of the stem is soft and remains soft in all forms. When we apply adjective endings to such stems, we will need to select vowels that show the softness of the final н of the stem. Compare the forms in the table below.
| Basic hard endings | Soft stem adjective |
|---|---|
| интере́сный рома́н | после́дний рома́н |
| интере́сная статья́ | последняя статья́ |
| интере́сное сло́во | после́днее сло́во |
| интере́сные но́вости | после́дние но́вости |
It is not hard to learn the forms for soft adjectives like последний if you remember the following correspondences:
| Hard Adjectives | а | ы | о | у |
| Soft Adjectives | я | и | е | ю |