In Unit 7, we learned the construction “у меня…”, which is used when you are talking about plans.
In order to say “I have”, you need to use the specific Russian construction.
“у меня есть + Nominative case”, where ‘у’ is a preposition, ‘меня’ is ‘I’ in the Genitive case and ‘есть’ is the Present tense of the verb ‘быть’ (to be).
This construction expresses possession or availability and translated literally, it means “in my possession there is…”
For example:
1. У меня есть машина.
I have a car.
2. У меня есть брат.
I have a brother.
To ask a question whether someone has something, we use the question word ‘кого’ (note that it is pronounced [kavo]):
"У кого есть + Nominative case?"
For example:
1. У кого есть телефон?
Who has a phone?
2. У кого есть карта?
Who has a card/map?
Here are Genitive case forms of other personal pronouns for this construction:
Personal pronoun | У + Genitive case |
я | у меня |
ты | у тебя |
он | у него |
она | у неё |
мы | у нас |
вы | у вас |
они | у них |
And you can ask a direct question using these forms:
For example:
1. У тебя есть муж?
Do you have a husband?
2. У вас есть друзья?
Do you have friends?
Listen to the audio to hear the correct answers
Listen to the audio to hear the correct answers
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