Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: James Kuyper Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Hello World in Russian Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2022 14:17:02 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 53 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2022 19:17:03 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="d6f3ed2a1a5d62f8b1d6c385d2e971a1"; logging-data="5064"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX184eg/Wb5v5p0QmDJC0dfUgWQfYItgsVqk=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/91.5.0 Cancel-Lock: sha1:7uhYLmUFJzeWpJkTrTq5zTPOrHY= In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c++:82878 On 1/29/22 17:50, Andrey Tarasevich wrote: > On 1/29/2022 9:19 AM, James Kuyper wrote: [Note: I accidentally posted that message to comp.lang.c rather than comp.lang.c++, breaking the thread. Andrey's response was also on that newsgroup] >> On 1/29/22 07:01, David Brown wrote: >> ... >>> What I have learned from all this, is that "мир" ("mir") means "world" >>> as well as "peace". I find that an interesting linguistic titbit. >> >> Which means that if a Russian leader says "Я хочу мир.", it's ambiguous >> whether he's saying he wants peace, or he wants the world. > > Not really. > > The subject for "хотеть" can be placed in Accusative or Genitive case, > depending on the nature of the subject. This is the case for many words > that can used to refer to a specific object or to a some sort of > non-quantifiable concept or resource ("peace", "water", "fish" etc.). > > "I want peace" would normally require "мир" in Genitive case, which is > "мира": "Я хочу мира". > > If you attempt to use "Я хочу мир" in this meaning, people would > normally understand you properly (given enough context), but you'll > still be perceived as an "untrained" speaker (e.g. child, uneducated, > non-native, etc.) > > "I want [the] world" would take "мир" in Accusative case, which is still > "мир": "Я хочу мир". > > And this later version still doesn't sound right, since literary norms > usually require an extra verb specifying/qualifying the desire. Not "Я > хочу мир", but "Я хочу владеть миром" ("I want to own the world") или "Я > хочу править миром" ("I want to rule the world") etc. I studied Russian for two years, about four decades ago, and never made any practical use of the language. My Russian skills are sufficiently rusty that I actually used translate.google.com to double-check before posting. It translated "I want peace." and "I want the world." the same way, which is a hint why translate.google.com shouldn't be used for serious translation efforts. However, I vaguely remember asking my Russian teacher about this same point when I first learned about this word, and I don't remember her answer mentioning any of the details that you just mentioned. I think she just said something about being able to figure out the intended meaning from context. > I think that "I want [the] world" has the same feel in English as well. > It doesn't sound quite right without extra specification.