perfect tense

[Elena Baraban]

Maybe:

Вчера вечером я почувствовал, что устал. 
Я (такую) усталость вчера вечером почувствовал.
На меня такая усталость вчера вечером навалилась.

"Вчера вечером я был усталым" sounds artificial, as if it were a translation exercise with nothing more offered than word for word with the same syntax as in the original.


Elena Baraban

President of the Canadian Association of Slavists

Associate Professor of Russian

German and Slavic Studies Department

325 Fletcher Argue Building

University of Manitoba

Winnipeg, MB

R3T 2N2

204-474-9735

Elena.Baraban at umanitoba.ca

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Paul B. Gallagher [paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM]
Sent: September 11, 2014 11:31 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] perfect tense

Sentinel76 Astrakhan wrote:

> To me "вчера вечером я устал" sounds completely unnatural. The
> proper way is "Вчера вечером я был усталым" or, colloquially, "вчера
> вечером я был усталый".

I took the past perfective to denote a change in state (from fresh to
tired): "I became tired." This transition was complete at the stated
time. No?

The options you offer clearly denote an ongoing (imperfective) state of
affairs, not the same thing.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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