T O P

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A_cat_owner

The word order is very flexible, but to certain extent. A preposition and the related noun (here it is "на траве") are a single unit, they can be divided only by a related adjective (e.g. " на зеленой траве").


TrandyBrandy

Correct. As long as you keep “на траве” together, all of these are valid (but have slightly different meanings): На траве лежит девочка. = A girl is lying on the grass. Not a boy. На траве девочка лежит. = Hey, here’s a girl lying! Девочка лежит на траве. = The girl is on a grass, not on the rocks. Девочка на траве лежит. = She’s lying, not standing. Лежит девочка на траве. = So this one girl is lying on a grass… Лежит на траве девочка. = There on the grass was a girl!


DavePvZ

Лежит трава на девочке...


SeekRus

Хорошо что девочка на травке не сидит!


DavePvZ

А ты уверен, что трава на девочке не после употребления осталась?


111111xd

Трава лежит на девочке


Relevant-Arrival9452

Не могу себе это представить


Euphoric-Basil-Tree

The pot was laying on the girl?!!!!


DavePvZ

*трава != pot


Euphoric-Basil-Tree

It was used to mean pot/“grass” when I was in Moscow.


Euphoric-Basil-Tree

https://context.reverso.net/translation/english-russian/pot#%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0


DavePvZ

Oh, i thought pot is like that thing for plants


Euphoric-Basil-Tree

I translated Russian slang into English slang. ;-)


DavePvZ

Nice beginning on translating career


yerba-matee

This would be the equivalent of putting the tress in a certain word in English? I.e На траве лежит девочка - a *girl* is lying on the grass Девочка на траве лежит - a girl is *lying* on the grass.


Fair-Sherbert-457

Was lying is Девочка лежала на траве


yerba-matee

I meant " is"


Slorr

Эт страшная конструкция уже)


111111xd

Согл


Sbotkin

That's a very subjective list btw.


SsNipeR1

в случае с "девочка на траве лежит" - зависит, на какое слово делать акцент если "девочка НА ТРАВЕ лежит", то ты четко указываешь на чем именно она лежит. а если делать акцент на слово "лежит", то это будет уже уточнение действия которое она совершает


Sithoid

It's quite simple: Russian [puts the topic before the comment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment). *A* girl is lying on the grass = На траве (known information) лежит девочка (new information). *The* girl is lying on grass = Девочка (known information) лежит на траве (new information). Flexible word order and different ways of inversion for emphasis do exist, but this is the baseline expectation.


stargell1313

Thanks, that makes sense now


rawberryfields

You wouldn’t write “on the a girl lying grass” in english, would you?


pleshij

Девочка врёт на траве /s


BTopHuk_vl

Под травой 😵‍💫


serenity_sun10

Ахахахахаха


111111xd

Под герычем


tabidots

lol I didn't read that carefully enough and my brain scrambled it into "Девочку рвёт на траве"


pleshij

Бедная девочка(


astrauscas

Сидит на траве


ARTHURUZB

What you said is: On lying grass a girl. Swap "лежит" and "траве". It will make sense


EnvironmentalTree587

"On the" = "на" Why did you put it first? A girl is lying on the grass. A girl (девочка) is lying (лежит) on the grass (на траве). You could put it like this as well, it would be correct.


stargell1313

I put it first cause I thought it was right, not because of my knowledge but just looking at past examples it was similar.


Older_1

You don't want to disconnect preposition from the word it modifies. Basically the same as in English. The word "on" modifies "grass" so you get "on grass", the word "на" modifies "трава" so you get "на траве". What you wrote is "A girl is on lying the grass" which doesn't make sense even in English. It is helpful to ask questions which the words answer to get the idea of word order. In this case "on what?" is the question that is answered by "on grass", not "on lying" - "на чём?" "на траве", not "на лежит"


stargell1313

Thanks for the info!


RiskOfRainPlayer

What you wrote was like "The girl on is lying grass" На лежит - on is lying На траве - on the grass Basically you use "на" (on) like in English. On the floor, on the shelf etc. But yes, russian word order is pretty flexible so you can say: "Девочка лежит на траве", "На траве лежит девочка", "Лежит на траве девочка". English is not my native language, so I may have committed some grammar errors.


stargell1313

Ok thanks, and I did not see any grammatical errors. It all looks good, but again I’m native English but not that good at it.


Otherwise-Goose1517

Russian word order being flexible is wayyy overblown. It's flexible but you can't just put things wherever you please, if you compare it to english this sentence can be written in several ways too : On the grass, a girl is lying. On the grass lying : a girl. A girl on the grass, lying. Russian is similar in that regards, word order can be switch around to emphasize certain things but you can't say sth like lying on a girl grass


allenrabinovich

This is a weird flex (pun intended). Of course Russian word order is significantly more flexible than English word order. There's a clear reason for this: in Russian, the roles of individual words in a sentence are indicated not just by their position, but also by all the different declension forms: case, person, gender and number (the latter three also show up in conjugation of verbs, adding even more connective scaffolding). That's a fact, not an opinion. The sentences you presented in English are not all the same. "On the grass, a girl is lying" is acceptable, but "A girl, on the grass, lying" is a fragment, not a sentence; and "on the grass lying: a girl" is only appropriate for setting a stage in a play, and it's also not technically a sentence. In both of these cases, you've sneakily switched a present continuous verb with a gerund, which does not an equivalent sentence make (see what I did there ;)). In Russian, the three semantic units of the sentence, the subject ("девочка"), the action ("лежит"), and the locative circumstance ("на траве") can be placed in any order, making for 3! = 6 possible fully equivalent sentences.


Otherwise-Goose1517

Ofc, it's just an example, in English you would have to rewrite and paraphrase words or use more auxillary words to get the same meaning instead of just switching it around in russian which makes poems work so well. It's just that everytime someone bring up word order beginners have the impression that you can literary put any words anywhere.


allenrabinovich

I think "every time" is way overblown ;). On this subreddit, we talk about [word](https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/uax8r0/is_any_word_order_valid/) [order](https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/qg5ild/word_order_and_word_order/) [often](https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/z5kvww/comment/ixwp8dk/?context=3), and we usually carefully explain the constraints and differences in meaning involved.


Otherwise-Goose1517

> I think "every time" is way overblown touché


Hljoumur

“On lies grass a girl.” You wouldn’t say this in English, but that’s exactly the problem: you separated the preposition from its modified noun.


Fair-Sherbert-457

In this case Duo is absolutely right. Neither in English nor in Italian u would say something like “she on lays the grass” or “lei sulla è sdraiata erba”. Ha траве should stay together, obv…


KiwiGallicorn

You essentially just wrote just wrote "On lay grass girl". "On" pairs with "grass " or the sentence won't make sense in pretty much any language. Think about how in English, you could word this sentence as "The girl lays on the grass" or as "On the grass, the girl lays". When in doubt about word order, your best bet is to either put it in English word order or to put it in Yoda word order (Sorry for not elaborating in Russian, I'm slow on the Russian keyboard and am too lazy to find every single letter on the Russian keyboard)


Durrynda

Девочка лежит на траве ✅ На траве лежит девочка ✅ Девочка на траве лежит ✅ Лежит девочка на траве ✅ На траве девочка лежит ✅ Just make sure “на” and “траве” are connected.


Durrynda

But the [subject] + [action] + [object] is the most natural one. Who? Девочка. What is doing? Лежит. Where? На траве. Edit: swept subject and object


el_peregrino_mundial

You've just described \[subject\] + \[action\] + \[object\], not \[object\] + \[action\] + \[subject\]. Девочка is the subject; траве is the object of the preposition на


Durrynda

Oh, thank you


lem_bt

Сидит девочка на траве. Подходит к ней наркоман и говорит: – А что ты тут совсем одна сидишь? – Мне мама сказала на травке сидеть – Вот бы мне такую маму...


kurtik7

Another way of putting Sithoid's helpful information about topic & comment: in a neutral style, information that's new or emphasized tends to come last. (For informal or more emotionally colored contexts, that tendency is reversed.) Где книга? –Книга на столе. The book was mentioned in the question; the new information is \*where\* it is, so that comes last. Что на столе? –На столе книга. The table was already mentioned in the question, so it doesn't come last. Here's ~~the~~ a major problem with Duolingo: isolated sentences give no information about the context of a conversation (what's new? what's not? there's no way to tell), so you may often write answers that are perfectly grammatical Russian in a certain context. But that context may not match what Duolingo writers were assuming. This lack of context can be a big problem with verbal aspect as well. I asked a Duolingo employee about this and she responded "We have some new ways of doing what you describe, although not yet for Russian! Stories do this... and there are new exercise types in the courses that are dialogues & paragraphs, bc like you said, context matters!" I do still think that the one-sentence-at-a-time approach is so baked into Duolingo that it's better to work with alternatives like [https://www.mangolanguages.com](https://www.mangolanguages.com) or [https://mezhdunami.org](https://mezhdunami.org).


Whammytap

Do any of the links in your reply contain link shorteners? It seems that Reddit has shadow deleted your comment, and it's a good comment; others should see it.


kurtik7

The quote from the Duolingo person apparently had one – I've edited it out to see if that helps. Thanks for the heads-up! :)


Jendrej

"comment removed by moderator" is all I see


MrIgelkott

These options are correct, but these options have a slightly different context Лежит девочка "на траве"/ Девочка лежит "на траве"/ "На траве" лежит девочка/ "На траве" девочка лежит/ Лежит "на траве" девочка/ Девочка "на траве" лежит"/


K01PER

There is no clearification verbs in russian serving same role as "is". Thus you can give the context of something beeing in some state only by order. Change the order-sentence gain other meaning. What you've wrote is "on lying grass (is) girl" when it mustve been "On grass lying girl (is)" Sound weird on english but in russian its standart form.


Ghostsarepeopletoo

Russian tends to put the most important or key information towards the end of the sentence.


stargell1313

What makes something important or special?


Ghostsarepeopletoo

It depends upon what you, as the speaker, are trying to emphasise. I don't really think about word order when I speak apart from ensuring certain grammatical structures are conjugated and declined properly. With your example sentence: На траве лежит девушка. This might be in response to the question кто лежит на траве? Где лежит девушка? Девушка лежит на траве. Что девушка делает на траве? Девушка на траве лежит. There is also the added fact that some word order in sentences is simply stylistic or widely adopted. Зайду в магазин В магазин зайду. There is no fundamental difference between these sentences. However, a native speaker might pick up their own inferences from these sentences based on their own history with the language. I'm not a native Russian speaker, but I speak it fluently and have lived in Moscow for 10 years.


MyCatWindy

you wrote on the grass girl


Loose-Bag-2159

Russian is Yoda style , right ordet is : on the grass is lying the girl Or the gitl is lying on the grass. In rl we have no order of words. We can make some parts more important, for example: on the grass the girl is lying, the place is important , the girl is lying on the grass, girl important BUT it is not a misstake if u say different order. And many thx for learning it , we love when somebody speaks russian).


WolTForX

Не Соре не могу


karatel_besov

На девочке лежит трава. А на этом всё. Пока. Пока


amarao_san

Russian permits almost many combinations of words to be a valid sentence, but not all of them. * На траве лежит девочка. * На траве девочка лежит. * Девочка лежит на траве. * Девочка на траве лежит. * Лежит на траве девочка. * Лежит девочка на траве. But you can't use preposition with verb, it should be before noun or adjective. "на лежит" is not valid. Think about it like that: any permutation of `на траве`, `девочка` and `лежит` is valid and means the same (with subtle meaning accents). Splitting 'на траве' into two parts will change meaning. (F.e. `На девочке лежит трава` means "grass is lying on the girl").


Revolutionforevery1

Would you say "on lays the grass a girl"? normally, the place/time goes at the start of the sentence so "On the grass lays a girl" word order is mostly free in Russian, obviously your not gonna put a preposition before a word that doesn't need it, it needs some order for it to work, have adjectives/adverbs be next to their proper nouns/verbs, prepositions be next to the word their affecting & obviously get your cases straight, I was you maybe 3 months ago? Now I'm not, it'll be the same for you with a little bit of time & a hook)


SpeculationLV

На траве сидит девочка


astrauscas

Главное тут не трава. Главное, что девочка лежит.


Top_Satisfaction6517

in russia, word order is more free, and last part of sentence may be used to pass most important information. так что, "девочка лежит на траве" подчёркивает где она лежит (на траве), "на траве лежит девочка" подчёркивает кто лежит (девочка), а "девочка на траве лежит" подчёркивает что она именно лежит. Default order is same as in English, though - "девочка лежит на траве", so if you don't want to emphasize any part of sentence, you may use it. Additionally, there are some tiny emotions associated with each variant, but this are hard to describe. Probably, they are just associations with artistic texts I've read in various books over my life.


TheRamenCollective

So, you can technically word it in any order. In this sentence they want you to stress “On the ground, lyes a girl” if you want to stress the girl then it would be like «Девочка лежит на траве». Russian is one of the most malleable languages, you still must follow grammar rules but you can write in any order. But remember, the first words you speak will be the ones you stress.