"У девочки есть брат?"
Translation:Does the girl have a brother?
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In theory, they're the same sound, but и softens the previous consonant and ы does not. According to a native speaker friend of mine. They sound totally different to me.
You would replace the genitive singular девочки with the genitive plural девочек: "У девочек есть брат?"
In my cheat tables, there are no -к endings in genitive plural. Is my table wrong or is this word an exception?
This is a zeroending I believe, so devochka should end in a consonant and to achieve that it becomes devochek, maybe you left that space empty in your table or wrote consonant ^^
"девочки" is the genitive singular, too. The genitive plural is "девочек".
It's the seven letter spelling rule. From the plurals lesson:
The 7-letter rule: Whenever you make any form of a word, and you need to write И or Ы, check this:
- after К, Г, Х and Ш, Ж, Щ, Ч always use И
But why can't duolingo write this on the informations in the genitive theme? There is just one example of an -a , -я ending word мама-мамы. So we could just think that every word's genitive (ending with -a) form are made with -ы. Девочка девочкы. Why do they not write one sentence about that we have to use the 7 letter rule here too?
Okay, this probably sounds really stupid to ask, but why is девочки used instead of девочка? Shouldn't девочка be feminine in its form already? What is it that turns девочка into девочки?
Meh...this is technically correct, but a bit on the poetic side of conversational English.
Yes so everyone confused with the whole у "something" есть, whatever has the object in that sentence is in gentive case, so for instance it's "у меня есть яблоко" not "у я есть", меня is in the genetive case because of possessions, it's quite easy to remember the format as the litteral meaning of this is "by me there is... " hope this helps!
"у девушки есть брат" is what I heard but it was rejected. Aside from that, I'm a little unclear on when to use "девушки" and when to use "девочка" - they seem to be very similar sounding words that mean the same thing.
As an american living in ukraine this is still one of the hardest thigs for my ears to differentiate. Use the -вуш- form to refer to a young woman, e.g. your waitress. Use the -воч- form to refer to a little girl, e.g. a toddler or girl of elementary school age.
You would replace the genitive singular девочки with the genitive plural девочек: "У девочек есть брат?"
What would I write to say "...the (something)" in a case like this?
Is it just intonation that makes this a question? I would think this could also be a statement.
Yes, in Russian there is often no clear distinction between statements and questions. You must use context and intonation to tell which is which.
Absolutely the same, I guess, since Russian has no articles. Though you may try to say that "Does the girl have a brother" is "есть ли у девочки брат?" and your variant is more close to what they have written here. "У девочки есть брат?"