declension of "sto"

[Edward M Dumanis]

On Thu, 31 Oct 1996, Robert Orr wrote:

>
> Dear Seelangovcy,
>                   I have three native speakers of Russian, all
> young, well-educated fairly recent immigrants, in my course on the
> Structure of Russian.  A day or two ago we were discussing "sto" (100)
> and I was told, by two out of the three (one from Moscow, and the other
> from Petersburg), that the declension sto (nom/acc)/sta(rest of
> declension) (which they found odd) has been replaced by  stam (dat),
> stami (instr) stax (prep).  On questioning, they seemed to be unsure of
> the actual usage; they admitted that "so sta rubljami" and "so stami
> rubljami" were both possible; also, however, when the number "100" stands
> on its own, without an accompanying noun (phrase), " so stami" could be
> used instaed of "s sotnej".
>
> Comments?
>
>
> Thanks in advance,  Robert Orr
>

Your informers are right. However:

Sta/Stami:

"So sta rubljami" is better, but "so stami rubljami" is o.k. too. However,
nowadays, it is used more as a colloquial form. At the same time, the
tendency is to substitute "sotnja" for "sto" in dat.and instr. cases
except for some stable word combinations. "So sta rubljami" is one of
them. E.g. "Nu ne pojdjosh' zhe ty na rynok so sta rubljami! Chto tam na
nih kupish'? So stami tvoimi rybljami tyda mozhno i ne sovat'sja!"

Edward Dumanis <dumanis at acsu.buffalo.edu>