Vacuum the house, Hannibal!

[joliecanard]

My Structure of Russian textbook has just reminded me of one of my favorite Russian words:

пылесос

It's 'vacuum-cleaner'. Mundane, yes, but I like it's roots - пыль 'dust' and сосать 'suck'

'dust-sucker'

My prof last year said that most Russians are unsure of how to conjugate the derived verb 'пылесосить' and will avoid conjugating it whenever

Comments

[prozacisyummy]

do you expect anyone to fucking understand that? I mean, I do. But thats only because I am a freaking genius of the highest order and magnitude.

[joliecanard]

It's how I weed out the weak. Good thing you get it, or I'd have to kill you.

[mortalysis]

hehe ljudojed. Russian is funny.

[joliecanard]

одноглазый, однорожный, летающий, пурпурный людоед.

Yep, too many syllables.

please!! I need your help!

[anonymous]

please! I'm learning russian, (well, trying) I've pretty much mastered basic things although 'consonant mutation' seem to be majorly problematic. The more i try to understand the less it makes sense. I would be grateful for all help, email me at 'screecher87@yahoo.co.uk' appreciated dearly :)

[muckefuck]

German is the same: Staubsauger. The derived verb is staubsaugen and the past participle should be formed regularly, i.e. gestaubsaugt, but many speakers can't resist the urge to treat the first element as a separable prefix and say staubgesaugt.

[joliecanard]

What if they're saying "Ich habe Staub gesaugt"?

[muckefuck]

Because the verb can also be transitive, e.g. "Ich habe den Boden staubgesaugt". German does have at least two verbs which take two accusative complements, i.e. fragen and lehren, so you could say saugen is ditransitive, too, if it weren't for the fact that the syntax won't allow staub to appear anywhere but immediately before the participle, e.g.:

Er hat die Studenten Deutsch gelehrt < > Er hat Deutsch die Studenten gelehrt < > Deutsch hat er die Studenten gelehrt

but:

Ich habe den Boden Staub gesaugt < > *Ich habe Staub den Boden gesaugt < > *Staub habe ich den Boden gesaugt.

Then there are the semantic hurdles: Staubsaugen is clearly lexicalised. Try a different complement, and you can't get the apparent double accusative, e.g.:

*Der Zeck hat meinen Hund Blut gesaugt.

Again, contrast this to lehren, where Deutsch can be freely substituted with any other subject.