- Forum >
- Topic: Russian >
- "У женщины есть брат."
66 Comments
The sentence can be translated literally as "At woman exists brother". It's almost like some programming language, lol. @woman has:brother
Russian grammar is actually extremely straightforward compared to, say, Latin. If this is your first declension/conjugation language, that isn't Russian's fault.
The Slavic languages as a whole evolves to be relatively easy to learn, as they were a regional trade language before they split apart, and for a time afterwards too.
Why is it женщины and not женщина? I thought the ending ы made the word plural?
I thought the ending ы made the word plural?
It does (well, depending on other things). But it's also the singular, genitive ending for feminine words ending in "а".
And in this construction "У" always takes genitive.
Its a genitive case we always use genitive to show possession of something,For prepositions or to show if someone is away.
Why is it брат here and not брата (or something, I could be misreading my table).
Basically, the thing you're having is in the First/Nominative case. And you, the guy who has that thing, is in Genitive case :-)
Hmm, I could have sworn the two matched in other instances but it's (obviously) extremely likely I'm wrong.
Gah, Russian is a hagfish. Every single time I think I'm starting to get a grip on it it just slimes me and swims away.
Possesive genitive is actually pretty basic and in english you would say 'Woman's brother' (Genitive + nominative) and not 'Woman's brother's'.
Okay, okay, I think I'm slowly getting it. Does "У женщини есть брат" means 'the women have a brother'? Because then I sort of get it.
Almost. The genitive plural is actually "женщин", not "женщини". And "есть".
Tigger is just wrong :-p Without "ь" at the end your sentence doesn't say anything so violent. It just doesn't make sense.
Thanks, Theron! I was using your website for the morphological thingermabob, but I spied the ending and didn't bother checking the rest, I guess. Shame on me. :)
Haha, I'll keep it in mind next time Tigger tells me something preposterous. XD
I think that's about right, only your sentence would be "The women are eating a brother (or their brother, I'm not sure which)", but I think you'd have to do something with the У for that. :-)
Close, but not quite (typos perhaps?):
"У женщины есть брат" - the woman has a brother
"У женщин есть брат" - the women have a brother
"A has/have B" in Russian becomes "у A (genitive) есть B (nominative)" which literally means something like "B is by/with A".
Thank you for the correction, Zirkul! I hadn't spied the missing и in the morphological list, which also says женщин. Ah well, at least I know where to go to pick what, which is a major improvement for me already. :D
It just so happens that the genitive plural of "женщина" is "женщин", and preposition "у" requires genitive.
In fact, I believe any noun ending with "-на" simply loses the trailing "a" in its plural genitive form -- at least all examples that come to mind fit this pattern.
To add to what an_alias has said:
-а | drop a
I wish it were that simple (and I am saying this with a degree of sarcasm). There are certainly exceptions to that rule. I am not a grammarian to tell you the pattern, but certain examples come to mind: овца (sheep) → овец, дырка (hole) → дырок, марка (postage stamp) → марок etc. Now that I think about it, all (or almost all) words ending with -ка change to -ок unless -ка is already preceded by a vowel (строка [a line of text] → строк, река [a river] → рек). But as the first example shows, those are not the only ones acquiring and extra vowel inside, basically for easier pronunciation. All of them drop the trialing -a though, so that part of the rule certainly stands.
A bit difficult to get it but I hope there is a special lesson for this later
I wrote "the lady has a brother" and this was marked as incorrect. I understand in English "lady" and "woman" have different connotations in relation to social standing, but they are essentially the same thing. I was just wondering if this distinction is more significant in Russian?
Lady cannot be used interchangeably with woman in English. One describes the gender, the other provides additional attributes to that gender, be they (un)necessary, (ill)fitting or otherwise.
How come it is forbidden to use есть in "у слобаки нет вода' but it's O.K without the negation?
This has to do with the fact that нет and есть are linked words. Basically, 'нет' is the antonym - or the opposite - of есть. So нет = 'not есть'. By saying 'нет есть', then, you are literally saying 'not not is' or 'it is not not there/existing'.
"That palmtree is not not there!" Which will have your friends going "..? What're you on about, mate?"
Ah, that explains it. :) I wasn't sure about that, so I left it off. Thanks for that!
Are you sure? If that were indeed the case, why would then "нет" take genitive? "Не есть", however strange sounding it might be, would almost certainly take nominative.
Are you sure "не есть" would take nominative? The past and future are "не было" and "не будет", which also take genitive. Certainly if it's not a contraction of "не + есть" there are a number of sources that need to be corrected...
Some research (i.e. some Wiktionary) suggests that the contraction took place in Old East Slavic and the phrase in modern Russian would actually be "не есть тут".
Perhaps you are right. "Будет" and "не будет" indeed take different cases, ditto with the past tense. So logically, there is no reason to expect that the present tense would behave differently.
37
how do you say it when the 'woman' is in plural form? Like how do you say "the women have a brother"?
Assuming женщина isn't irregular and I got the genitive plural right I believe it's:
у женщин есть брат
- 37
Sorry, I forgot to mention I'm only learning Russian in English alphabets, so I can't understand the Russian alphabets. Could you write them in English please? Sorry for the trouble.
It's recommended you also learn the alphabet. Not sure what your reason is for not learning it, but it'll make reading newspapers a whole lot easier, let me tell you. :)
- 37
Actually, I'm learning Russian for fun experience. I don't live in Russia and I'm not sure if I might have a chance to visit there either, though it would be lovely if I could. So I don't think I'll be reading any Russian newspaper or have a need to read one :p . If I can verbally communicate with someone who speaks Russian that would be good enough for me :) Who knows, I might change my mind in the future.
Fair enough. :) I'm only seeing benefits from being able to read, myself, but it's a personal opinion, as you say.
i also think that you have to learn the alphabet, some of the sounds in russian don't even have accurate equivalents in english. its not easy, but just getting the basics and then doing duolingo you can get a grip of it pretty quickly. i even managed to get the basic layout of the russian keyboard after completeing 5-6 units
In the future you can use this site to convert both ways between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets (I actually have a hard time reading Russian written in the Latin alphabet so I use it when that shows up in the comments).
But for now:
Assuming zhenshhina isn't irregular and I got the genitive plural right I believe it's:
u zhenshhin est' brat
есть was throwing me off so badly because i took words literally instead of in a group. у меня есть = with me there is = I have у женщины есть = with the woman is = the woman has -> of the woman, that's why the Genitive case is used!! Wow.
Sos i cannot continue even with a correct answer . I have completed this lesson
So кошка and женщина are both feminine nouns ending in а. But in the genitive, one takes и and the other ы. Is there a rule to this or do I have to learn them by heart?
That's easy, there is a spelling rule to never write the "ы" after the letters "г", "к", "х", "ж", "ч", "ш", "щ", so it always would be "и" after them.
(Later you might encounter some exceptions to that but they are very rare and it's usually foreign names or terms, or made up words so don't worry about it now)
Context. The preposition "у" requires the genitive case, so "женщины" can only be in genitive singular, because genitive plural for this word is "женщин". It can't possibly be nominative plural "женщины", because, as I said, "у" requires the genitive.
I didn't wrong any word, and he took my heart.... You are not serious. Give me my heart back......
- 1352
Leaving the articles a/the out in the English version of this sentence changes brother into a title. As in a designated position with the title of brother or even an assigned name such as in a game.
You can leave articles out in Russian but very seldom in English.
- 110
How do I differentiate declaring sentence (the woman has a brother) from questioning sentence (does the woman has a brother?)?
In writing by the question mark in the end; in speech by the intonation. There's no other indicators.
