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I was recently translating a text from German to Russian and came across the following phrase:

Salzbrezeln mit Preiselbeeren

which means in English

Salted pretzels with cranberries

I translated it to Russian like this

Солёные брецели с брусникой

I am a Russian native speaker and realize that I never use berries in the plural form. Some examples:

чай с малиной, клубника с сахаром, торт с вишней, пирог с ежевикой

I never use them like this

чай с малинами, клубники с сахаром, торт с вишнями, пирог с ежевиками

Would you agree with that? In that case is there any reasonable explanation for this?

Danny Lo
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    related: https://russian.stackexchange.com/questions/2215/why-%d0%bb%d1%83%d0%ba-is-a-mass-noun-while-%d0%be%d0%b3%d1%83%d1%80%d0%b5%d1%86-is-not – Quassnoi Mar 11 '20 at 16:18
  • BTW, these are "претцели" (sing.= претцлель) – Sergey Belyaev Mar 12 '20 at 16:13
  • @SergeyBelyaev брецель is a correct translation according to the wiki https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Брецель – Danny Lo Mar 12 '20 at 17:20
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    https://rus.stackexchange.com/questions/422920/%d0%9f%d0%b8%d1%80%d0%be%d0%b6%d0%ba%d0%b8-%d1%81-%d0%b2%d0%b8%d1%88%d0%bd%d1%8f%d0%bc%d0%b8 – Alex_ander Mar 19 '20 at 12:10

1 Answers1

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Names of small berries are usually used as collective nouns in Russian. In cooking, berries are often used in the form of jam, mashed with sugar, so you can also look at that as mass nouns.

Also, картошка and лук are always collective: жареная картошка с луком – usually it means more than one potato and more than one onion. Names of other vegetables can also be collective: выращивают свеклу и капусту.

Names of animals are often collective: охотились на соболя, зайца, били белку, ловили рыбу.

On the other hand, when it goes about cherries, it is often plural: пирожки с вишнями, вареники с вишнями.

Yellow Sky
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    I think it's more like an uncountable, at least for smaller berries (like blueberry or cranberries. No one will ever count those). By the way it looks like a recent trend: https://tinyurl.com/wwx8lxy (ngram). – Alissa Mar 11 '20 at 17:47
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    I disagree about cherries. It is much more natural to say пирожки с вишней. In fact I don't think I ever heard anyone saying it the way you wrote. – user7808407 Mar 11 '20 at 21:37
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    @user7808407 - What exactly do you disagree with? With the fact that some people do say пирожки с вишнями? Or with the fact that if you didn't hear a thing it can still well exist? Even пирог с вишнями and торт с вишнями exist. – Yellow Sky Mar 11 '20 at 22:37
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    I sort of concur with @user7808407, in the sense that it's relatively rare to hear that; generally, there is nothing special about вишня in this regard. "Торт с вишнями" rather implies that the торт украшен (отдельными) вишнями rather than filled with them (but one can just as well say торт с клубниками). Normally though, one would say пирожки с вишней. – Zeus Mar 12 '20 at 02:21
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    Instead of downvoting you'd better post your own "correct" answer. – Yellow Sky Mar 13 '20 at 18:14
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    Despite most web recipes say вареники с вишней (which sounds rather formal, like coming from food industry and reminding of the ill-famed Soviet 'obschepitt' system), there are serious cooking books (e. g. Поварская книга известного кулинара Д. И. Бобринского: https://books.google.ru/books/content?id=TkE4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT246&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U19LwGEiLLLj3yifygkKmsbkfe-uA&w=1280 ) describing вареники с вишнями. Same with черешня/черешни: the context rules. Here's an example from Pushkin's "Выстрел": Он стоял под пистолетом, выбирая из фуражки спелые черешни... – Alex_ander Mar 19 '20 at 10:14