Yeah, it is customary to capitalize "Вы" when addressing a single recipient politely, although this custom isn't observed very strictly outside formal correspondence. In fact gramota.ru, a government-supported portal of information on standard written Russian, apparently considers not capitalizing "Вы" when addressing a single person a less serious error than capitalizing it when addressing more than one person, which is the opposite of what I assumed the rule was. But then, I'm a native speaker, so what do I know about prescribed standards?Radioclare wrote:1. Someone wrote "Если множественное число - вы, если единственное то Вы или ты." So I should be capitalising "Вы" if I'm using it to refer to one person? I just want to check this because in my textbooks it has always been written in lower case.
Radioclare wrote:2. I am confused about the difference between "обед" and "ужин". My textbook said "The main meal of the day, обед, is a moveable feast - it may be at midday, in the afternoon or in the evening". I took this as meaning that "обед" was the correct word to describe my main meal, regardless of what time I normally have it. But on Lang8 someone wrote "Обед с 12 до 3" which makes it sound more like "обед" is simply "lunch", regardless of whether it's a proper meal or just a sandwich
Yeah, that is essentially right. To me the distinction was always less about either meal being the "main" one and more about how it ties into your work/school routine - "обед" is when you take a break from your work to have a meal at around the middle of the day, whereas "ужин" is assumed to be taken after you've left work in the evening. If I heard someone describe their 6:30 PM meal as "обед" I would assume either that they've been so busy at work that they couldn't take a proper lunch break, or that it's their tongue-in-cheek way of implying that they woke up at noon or later.