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- Topic: Russian >
- "У меня есть молоко."
90 Comments
This is a special construction to indicate possession. "U menya est' moloko" would literally translate to: To me (U menya) there is (est') milk (moloko). "Est'" in this case means "to be". The verb can also mean "to eat". You are right about the simplification. Remember, in Russian, the verb "to be" is not necessary in the present tense. Hence, the omission is also correct. ;)
296
ь is the soft sign; it softens the sound before it. So т will become softer like tj /jestj/. In the case of ест, т is simply t /jest/.
Correct answer would be 'у меня есть', but it's very specific. You can use this to emphasize the possession, like 'I do have a thing'. Overwhise the answer should be just 'да' or 'да, есть'.
'меня есть' without the preposition 'у' literally translates as 'to eat me', which is probably not what you're going for.
"Есть" can generally mean two things.
- "Есть" - infinitive of the verb meaning 'to eat'. "Ест" is a masculine present tense form of the verb "есть".
- "Есть" - a form of a verb "быть" ('to be'). This form called 'realis mood', in case you want to make your own research, but unless you're really interested in linguistics I would advice against it. What you need to know is that "есть" might have several meanings depending on the context: to eat, to be, to have. It might look confusing at first, but in practice it's always quite obvious.
534
Aaargh! Until I learn to touch-type Cyrillic, I am not going to waste time searching out the letters. So I use the Latin letters. I typed U menya est moloko and had it marked wrong, with the Y/U marked , not the lack of an apostrophe. i dunno.