60 Comments
653
Funny how boy in Russian is malchika In romance languages: Mal=not Chika/chica=girl So a boy is a not-girl
mal means bad, at least in Spanish. malcriado = wrongraised = spoiled. bad girl would be chica mala
As I could learn so far, «есть» (and its inflections like «ест» and «едят») usually means "eat".
The word «есть» (with no inflections) can be used to mean "exist"/"there is" and, in combination with a «У», "have" (genitive case). (Explanations in lesson Basics 2).
examples
subject in singular:
- The boy eats apples = Мальчик ест яблоки.
- The boy has apples = У мальчика есть яблоки.
subject in plural:
- The boys eat apples = Мальчики едят яблоки.
- The boys have apples = У мальчиков есть яблоки.
Updated with suggested correction from stas_kysel's comment bellow: мальчиков instead of мальчики in plural genitive.
This is a great explanation. I was very puzzled why I got marked wrong on this question also. It's going to be a hard distinction to learn. I'm not exactly sure how У works as a word.
I usually see the «У» as something that can turn on the genitive case, pretty much the same as the ' (apostrophe) in English.
My native language doesn't even have genitive case, so I don't see a big difference between EN and RU on this matter.
Portuguese (BR).
It is odd that although Latin have several cases, most Neo-Latin/Romance languages don't.
Same thing happened to English. Old English had 5 cases, 3 genders and even 3 "numbers" (singular, plural and dual).
- 1039
Please correct: У Мальчики есть яблоки = У Мальчиков есть яблоки. And yes, very good explanation.
Is the genitive sentence structure "у ____ есть", the only way to differentiate between "having" and "eating" in this context ?
У мальчика есть хлеб — мальчик ест хлеб.
As you can see, they are quite different.
- 35
There are tips and notes for each lesson, only visible in the web app. https://www.duolingo.com/skill/ru/Genitive-Case---1
Tips and notes
In Russian “I have” is expressed by «У меня (есть)» structure. The owner is in the Genitive case.
GENITIVE
"The of-case". It is one of the most universal cases. How do you make the forms? Here is the regular pattern:
TABLE
A zero ending means that the word ends in a consonant or a soft sign (which is just a way to show the final consonant is "soft"). In the Nominative singular, a Russian word can only have the following endings: а, я, о, е, ё ornothing ("zero ending").
GENITIVE OF NEGATION
If you use «нет» to say that there is "no" something or you do not have it, the object is always in Genitive:
У меня́ есть я́блоко → У меня́ нет я́блока
Здесь есть рюкза́к → Здесь нет рюкзака́.
MAJOR USES
"of" (possession): яблоко мамы = mom's apple"of" (amount): чашка чая, много чая = a cup of tea, a lot of tea
A huge number of prepositions requires this case. Yes, «у меня есть», «У неё есть» only use «меня» and «неё» because «у» wants Genitive.
For он, она and оно Genitive doubles as a non-changing possessive "his", "her", "their": его, её, их.
initial «н» is used for him/her/them with the majority of prepositions (doesn't affect possessives)
INDECLINABLE NOUNS
A little side note: some nouns of foreign origin are indeclinable. It means that all their forms are the same. Foreign nouns that end in о/е become like that (кофе, метро, радио, резюме), as well as all nouns that do not fit into Russian declension patterns (see above).
This includes female names that end in anything other than А or Я. A few -ь-ending names are an exception (Любовь and Biblical names like Юдифь).
So, all of the following names are automatically indeclinable: Маргарет, Мэри, Элли, Дженни, Рэйчел, Натали, Энн, Ким, Тесс, Жасмин.
I AM AWAY
Russian also uses the Genitive to state that someone is "away", "not there": Мамы сейчас нет. In English such use would correspond to "There is no mom at the moment", or even "There is no me now". We are not hard on that particular construction in the course, but it is important to know it all the same.
Added bonus: when a verb directly acts on a noun, the noun is called a direct object and is in Accusative. In Russian, only -а/-я feminine nouns have a unique form for it. Others just reuse Genitive or don't change the word at all (Nominative)
NOTHING
Russian uses.... let's call it "consistent" negation. It means that in negative sentences you are required to use "nothing" instead of "anything", "nowhere" instead of "somewhere" and so on. Let's meet the first of these pronouns:
У меня ничего нет. = I don't have anything.Она ничего не ест. = She doesn't eat anything.
You'll also notice that, unlike standard English, Russian has no rule against using double negatives.
I thought in the genitive case you use the plural form, correct? So why is this not "The boy has an apple and bread"?
I think in this case "the boy" is supposed to be in the genitive case since he is the owner, not the apples or the bread. This is how I understand it at least.
While on the topic, is there no plural form of bread in Russian, either? In English you can't say "breads" so I'm wondering if it's the same situation here.
That's one of the few exception of Russian language as seen in previous lesson ;) !
What is with the addition of the a on the end of мальчик. Previously we learned that this means boy, so with an a, I would have figured it means boys, plural. And behold, duolingo gives boys as a possible meaning for the word. So, how come 'the boys have apples and bread' is wrong?
мальчика is the genitive case of мальчик. It's still singular.
The genitive case is used, among other things:
- to show possession
- when counting something in quantities of 2, 3, or 4 (genitive singular) or more (genitive plural)
- after some prepositions such as у
3 мальчика would be "3 boys", which may be why "boys" is shown as a possible hint for this form of the word, but it's still singular.
And here, there is no number 2, 3, or 4 to give it a plural meaning; instead, there is the preposition у which means roughly "at" and is used here to indicate possession -- "at the boy is" (у мальчика есть) is used for "the boy has".
For "the boys have", you would need say "at the boys is", using the genitive plural after у.
Why do we say: у папы, у женщины, but we say у мальчики? (And all of them were in singular in the previous exercises)
See the "spelling rules" sections in the grammar tips and notes, e.g. in https://www.duolingo.com/skill/ru/Plurals or in https://www.duolingo.com/skill/ru/Animals-1 .
Whether to use -ы or -и depends on the previous consonant ("after К, Г, Х and Ш, Ж, Щ, Ч always use И").
- 1039
Hi. I can not see these links, but it looks like the question was about singular, not plural. And plural rules are not applicable here. "у" means that the word is in genitive case (answers "кого? чего?"), and that is what changes/adds the ending - so if there is any rule of changing word ending depending on case, that rule would be applicable.
- 1039
Changing of ending in different cases of a noun depends on type of the noun (there are 3 types) and on ending of the noun, see e.g. http://videotutor-rusyaz.ru/uchenikam/teoriya/140-pravopisanieokonchaniyimensucshestvitelnyh.html - you need genitive case (родительный падеж), because of "у". "папа", "женщина", "девочка" are of first type, and "мальчик" of second type. Examples: папа - у папы, женщина - у женщины, девочка - у девочки, мальчик - у мальчика, совок - у совка, кубик - у кубика, гараж - у гаража, древко - у древка, секвойя - у секвойи, путь - у пути, знамя - у знамени.
папа, женщина end in -а, мальчик ends in a consonant -- they inflect differently.
A little bit like how in English we have "cat, cats" but "box, boxes" (and not "cates" or "boxs"). Different nouns may add different endings for the same meaning depending on the shape of the word.
- 435
im having a really hard time distinguishing when to use what ending, like why is it мальчка instead of мальчик, яблоки instead of яблоко, or хлеб instead of maybe хлеба? any help is appreciated, спасибо!!
This may come up later in future lessons, not how do I know if a word is singular or plural in the genetive case?
- 1039
суть is only used as noun currently. The verb is 100 years old ancient, one can never see it in modern texts.
