Контролная работа

[janetlin]

Just in case studying for my Russian unit test (which is in half an hour) didn't fry my brain enough over the weekend, my Child Development teacher popped a quiz on us today. Gyah! Who cares whether a zygote develops limb buds at 5 weeks or not? I'm trying to cling desperately to the _six_ different verbs Russian has for "to go" (and this is just traveling, not even counting all the other things we use "go" for). I shit you not. Unidirectional, or multi-? By foot, or vehicle? Continuous or habitual, or one-time? elven_alchemist, your language was on crack when it came up with that.

And just to make life fun, there are completely separate verbs for "traveling multi-directional by foot" and "strolling." Can't we just use гулять all the time and forget about ходить and its (way too many) permutations? Ой. You'd think a language that spent most of its life without an alphabet would be _simpler_ than others.

Comments

[elven-alchemist.livejournal.com]

You use "go" for really many things. Poor Russians have to memorize for which words it is used too, and you can sometimes find "go" in completely unexpected phrases;-))) The other difficult one is "get", similar situation...
When you say гулять you usually mean the whole process, and I would rather translate this as "walk". When you say "ходить" you mean the physical process itself, or moving toward some target (or aim?), well, there are different meanings. I've just looked in my dictionnary and found: "ходить v shube" (again sorry for translit) means "wear a fur coat", "ходить na lekzii" means "attend lectures". "ходить pod parusami" means "sail", and there are much more.
Also, the word "гулять" means to be unfaithful to one's sexual partner (is "to cheat on" in english? my dictionnary is not THAT informal:-))). Well, "ходить" can also mean to be in love relationship with someone, though it's not often used, usually say about a man, and the preposition is "k", so if they say about a woman "hodit k nei odin" that means there is a man who comes to her place and who is in love relationships with her. Ah, and the expression "ходить nalevo" (go left) means to cheat on the sexual partner as well.

[janetlin.livejournal.com]

That's so fabulous, about гулять. Yes, it's generally "to cheat on" one's spouse/partner, though there are other idioms like "run around on" and expressions like being a "rover" or having a wandering/roving eye, and roving ~ strolling, so I can see the logic there.

And yes, we do use "go" for a lot of things. But at least it's the same word every time (well, except for the irregular conjugation - why are the most useful verbs all irregular?). And "get" is nasty, too. It has, like, half a page in my dictionary.