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- "I have a mom and dad."
"I have a mom and dad."
Translation:У меня есть мама и папа.
41 Comments
You don't. You can omit it entirely, which is a more colloquial way of saying it. I naturally shorten it to "U minja mama i papa"
'To have' in Russian is constructed by 'У + genitive (e.g. меня)'. This is literally 'at me'. Есть 'there is/are' is emphasis and in occasions should be dropped or can just be omitted.
I got caught on this as well and am happy to be corrected here. It seems that generally 'и' should be used when grouping similar things (in this case used because mum and dad are both parents) whereas 'а' is used when making a comparison.
Source: http://www.rus-on-line.ru/Exercises/Grammar/13-grammar.html
И is used when the two elements are perceived as compatible, а when they tend to contradict one another.
What does the U mean at the beginning? Do you put the person (я) at the end of мин? I don't quite understand the construction
"У" translates to "At", "By", or "With". "Меня" is the genitive form of "Я", and just means "me". "У меня" therefore roughly translates to "At me", and when added with "Есть" (which means "There is/are". So "У меня есть" then just means "There is at me", and is the typical way to write "I have" in Russian.
That's not right. Dad is informal, and in speech using "dad" as the word for "father" is quite casual and coloquial. So you need to translate отеч as father and папа as Dad, (or Papa, or Pop...)
Yes, you are right though отец is a more literary, "official" word. So, dad and папа belong to the same style of everyday speech but one should not be punished for knowing more distinguished words
Someone please straighten out this есть deal for me. Is it optional? And if so why does Duolingo mark my translations incorrect when I opt to use it in future lessons?
Some people claim it is optional in daily use, however, I learnt у меня есть as the standard way of saying "I have".
Most Russians would definitely leave away the word есть when they say that they have a mother and a father. The word есть is mostly used in questions and answers like Да, есть. The robot voice is no useing intonation questions which are very typical to Russian, e.g. У тебя молоко? with a rising intonation on the last leter о is a question 'Do you have milk?' (I'm a Finnish Russian and English teatcher testing this app for my new pupils next autumn.)
565
In the task there is "a" in front of "mom" and "NOTHING(!)" in front of "dad". Why do they omit "a" in front of "dad"? see e.g. https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/i-have-a-mom-a-dad-and-a-sister.1957733/
You can check the correct and standardized tramsliteration here: https://www.translitteration.com/transliteration/en/russian/iso-9/
It doesn't help with the pronounciation though.
У is not a pronoun, but a preposition, meaning "at". So this sentence literally translates to "At me (or with me) there is a mother."
Here is the one I use : http://russian.typeit.org/ There are others , e.g. , babelpad , which is a fine program .
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I use a virtual keyboard from https://www.branah.com/russian.Just type using your mouse and then copy and paste.Much easier than trying to remember Russian characters on an English keyboard!
Can you type ”est” if we can’t use the actual Russian translated letters? It didn’t except that.
Russian explanation says u menya yest' mama I papa but duolingo will not accept any form of have ect that I use. What would be correct. I do not have the Russian alphabet and have to do everything in English. Thank you
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why "у меня мама и папа" is wrong??? Do we really need "есть" here? (we didn't in other sentences)
Есть isn't necessary. Есть is only used if you really want to bring out something. I study russian in school and we barely use есть
