# Ukrainian:   Візміть місце



## Szkot

In a BBC drama series - The Nest - the characters visit a medical clinic 'abroad'.  On the wall is a sign:

Приймальня
Будь ласка, візміть місце і чекати, щоб називатися. This is meant to mean Reception.  Please take a seat and wait to be called.

I guess this is just a bad translation, but I wonder whether the idiom візміть місце actually exists in Ukrainian.  Somewhere, possibly in Russian, I have seen it used to mean 'take place' (of an event), but that may have been wrong as well.


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## ahvalj

Szkot said:


> Somewhere, possibly in Russian, I have seen it used to mean 'take place' (of an event), but that may have been wrong as well.


In Russian, it does exist: _займите место _“take your place”.


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## ohhell

I think in Ukraine we say something like _присядьте _"take a seat' 
And _займіть місце _"take a place" we use more for transport. 
For example, when you are on a bus and a driver tells you to "take a place/seat" _займіть місце_ which in this case means something like 'you don't need to stand as there is a free place to sit' or if you bought a plane ticket and stewardess tells you, 'take a seat' which in this case means that you had bought a ticket, so you should sit on a place which is stated on the ticket...

I'm not sure if I got your question in the right way but I hope I helped a little bit...


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## Szkot

Thank you.  I wondered how correct the Ukrainian was; it sounded a bit unnatural.  Also I thought the use of називатися might be a mistake.


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## ohhell

Szkot said:


> Thank you.  I wondered how correct the Ukrainian was; it sounded a bit unnatural.  Also I thought the use of називатися might be a mistake.



Yep, _називатися_ is a mistake here, also verbs are used in the wrong way.
The right way to say it would be, '_Будь ласка, присядьте й почекайте, Вас покличуть_.' - 'Please, take a seat and wait to be called'

_'Приймальня' and 'Будь ласка' _are fine ( by the way, people sometimes mistakenly write Будь ласка with a hyphen like_ Будь-ласка _but it's wrong so I'm glad they at least didn't make that mistake  

If you have any other questions about the Ukrainian language, I'll be glad to answer them ( at least those questions which about I know ). 
Have a good day!


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## Szkot

Thank you.  I know very little Ukrainian, but I thought it looked wrong in the television series, like someone had looked up the words one by one in a dictionary

There was also a sign pointing to  номери консультантів which I guess was also wrong.


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## ohhell

I've never heard anything like this, it's must be wrong but I don't know what they meant to say by that so it's kind of hard to explain it to you.

"_номери_" can be referred to hotel rooms but as it's a medical clinic maybe they wanted to say 'hospital wards/rooms'
It seems to me that they just combined a little bit unrelated words because I just can't figure it out  

I've found that photo but still can't figure out what they meant xd


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## Szkot

In Britain senior hospital doctors are called _consultants_, but also clinics have _consulting rooms_, where examinations and minor medical procedures are carried out.

Whatever they meant, they made a mess of it.  Thanks for all your help.


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## Panceltic

Just my 2p, there's also something distinctively off with these signs in terms of their design. Is it the colour combination or font choices, I don't know, but you wouldn't see such a thing in real life.


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## ohhell

Panceltic said:


> Just my 2p, there's also something distinctively off with these signs in terms of their design. Is it the colour combination or font choices, I don't know, but you wouldn't see such a thing in real life.


Yep, I think the font on the first sign is especially off. Although those colours look pretty similar to what we use in Ukraine.


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## Slogos

Looks like one of those word-for-word machine translations. Although, this is much better than switching your keyboard to Cyrillic and typing English words...


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## Apricity

"Будь ласка, візміть місце і чекати, щоб називатися" - To me, how we usually put it in good Ukrainian is: "Просимо Вас сісти та чекати, поки Вас не покличуть". Of course, there may be different ways to convey the meaning; you may use, for example, the word "присісти" instead of "сісти", although the word "присісти" originally meaning only "to squat" assumed also the meaning of "to sit down for a moment" only recently (decades ago) under the influence of the other language, especially when Ukrainian was proclaimed the state language, and non-Ukrainian speakers started to massively use Ukrainian (among other things) adding to Ukrainian words others meanings. An illustrative example is the famous statement, so often used by politicians "Україна відбулась".


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