How to say "it mean nothing"?

[Yuri Yurinov]

Hello Parallel,

What is common in Russian and English? First of all they belong to one family. Its name is Indo-European family. That means either English or Russian developed from one mother tongue which existed many ages ago. Still there are words in both languages which sound almost alike, for example, SON - СЫН, DAUGHTER - ДОЧЬ, DAY - ДЕНЬ and others.

What is different? Russian is considered to be a synthetical language. What does it mean? For instance, there are 6 grammatical cases in Russian language and the endings of nouns and adjectives change according to the cases. There are many endings for verbs too and they depend on grammatical Persons and Numbers. Grammatical Gender plays much more important role in Russian and the endings of words depend on Gender very much. Thus, thanks to endings there are so many word forms in Russian, and, which is important, we can guess the meanings of the words without context more easily than in English. For example we can guess sex a of a doer of an action by a verb or adjective and so on.

English is considered to be an analitical language. In English the meaning of the word prevails over the number of its forms, i.e. the meaning of the word depends much on its place in the sentence or in the whole text, in other words it depends on context. I think native speakers would explain you analitism of their own language better than I could.

So, our languages are very different and if we speak differently we also think in different ways. For instance, the word 'success' cannot be personified in Russian, and we never say (in Russian, of course) "He is a success". We say,"He is a person who has achieved success". And there are many such examples.

Milanya was right about Leo tolstoy's novel "War and Peace." Take it easy. There is another point. Had been the title of this book translated correctly it would have sounded like this - "War and Society". In XIXth and in the beginning of XXth century the Russian word 'Мир' may be written in two ways but sounded similarly. The first variant meant Peace and the meaning of the second word was Society. When Leo Tolstoy was naming his novel he kept in mind the second word, and, moreover, he used that word.

That's enough for today. I'll be glad, if I help you. Excuse me my mistakes for I am only learning English.

Best wishes,

Yuri
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Everything is Anything.

Please NO Youtube on "My first steps in English" thread... Yuri Zverev

[Tanya_88]

Wow my post is so popular :) I have started this thread because I could not find answer on this question neither in web or textbooks. Yes the sentence - it mean "nothing" is what I searched for. But I agree with Planta that if you are speaking via phone, to use sign " is uselessly, I think in this case you needed to use context of conversation. And also Planta I understood your post as friendly :)
Parallel. There are some difference between English and Russian especially in grammar, Yuri will give you more clearly answer. Recently I have been interested in German but uhh..... better I continue learning of English.

[Gerald]

Please tell me the difference between two of highlighted words.As you can see one is in present tense and other in past.

Thanks alot
nick

"Why can't you learn English grammar the same way you learned the grammar of your mother tongue? Wait a minute, who says you can't? You can,"

[Yuri Yurinov]

Hi Nick,

This is a question for native speakers but I'll try to answer it.

In the first case learn is in the form of Simple Infinitive which usually follows modal verbs (can, may and others) , in the second case this verb is in the Past Simple Tense.

Best wishes,

Yuri
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Everything is Anything.

Please NO Youtube on "My first steps in English" thread... Yuri Zverev

[Gerald]

Hi Yuri ,
Thanks for your help.Is it a correct grammar to say "Why don't you do your homework like you did yesterday".
Thanks

[Yuri Yurinov]

I am afraid your sentence is invalid. Doing your homework properly can't become your habitual action since yesterday. And you should use 'as' in place of 'like'. And there should be 'it' between 'did' and 'yesterday'. And what about a question mark?

Good luck,

Yuri
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Everything is Anything.

Please NO Youtube on "My first steps in English" thread... Yuri Zverev

[Parallel]

Hi Milanya
Please forgive me my error about the author of War and Peace. It's one of my week points that I often can't remember names correctly - not only book-titles, authors, actors and all those celebrities one should know about, but also the names of people I'm in contact but don't see regularly... I hope you don't mind!
Urs

[Gaspar]

[Milanya]

Gaspar, thank you for catching my typo.
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con·text - The part of a text or statement that surrounds a particular word or passage and determines its meaning.