Should it be:
Bad weather doesn't exist.
or
The bad weather doesn't exist.
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1I have a feeling you're trying to translate "у природы нет плохой погоды"... – RegDwigнt Apr 27 '11 at 10:25
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that's absolutely right! :) – Valentina Apr 27 '11 at 18:29
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In that case, you should really visit our chat. I would post an answer right here right now, but that would be blatantly off-topic. (The main site is not a translation service; but the chat often is. And there are a few people with sufficient command of Russian there.) – RegDwigнt Apr 27 '11 at 18:32
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Thank you, I honestly didn't pay attention to the chat room! – Valentina Apr 27 '11 at 19:36
1 Answers
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It depends on what you mean. Certainly bad weather does exist, so you could only be talking about an ideal place on the earth, if there is one, where it doesn't. So if you were talking about such a place (real or imagined), you could say
Bad weather doesn't exist.
But if you were referring to some specific spate of bad weather that was expected but didn't arrive, you could say
The bad weather doesn't exist.
But it would be more likely to say
The bad weather didn't happen.
Robusto
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You know, I was SURE it didn't require any article. But then, thinking about it, I started to become less sure. So I was thinking, and maybe you confirmed so, here we have the rule "specific vs. non-specific"? – Alenanno Apr 27 '11 at 10:00
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I took it to mean that weather is neither good or bad, it just is. If you are talking about a particular spate of weather, it seems odd to use the verb 'exist'. I can't explain it... anyway, the simple answer is that it's variant one. – z7sg Ѫ Apr 27 '11 at 13:15
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1I mean that it doesn't matter, whether it rains, snows, whether it's sunny, cloudy or stormy, it's silly to complain about it. I wanted to say that all types of the weather could be good for different people at different times. – Valentina Apr 27 '11 at 18:32
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I would note that the reason for this difference is that the signals that its referent is already known (it's in the discourse). For how this works, see anaphora. Sans the, weather might be considered a natural kind term, such as water or lions, which refers to a whole class of objects or a typical member of this class. I am not personally sold on natural kinds, but you might find the theories enlightening. – Rachel Aug 29 '12 at 05:23
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@Valentina: Bad weather will do what you want, but what about: there is no weather either good or bad but thinking makes it so? :^) – Rachel Aug 29 '12 at 05:34