"Моя сестра говорит, что у нас нет картошки."
Translation:My sister says that we do not have potatoes.
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Since this is a negative sentence, shouldn't this be the genitive case plural, "картошек"?!
I think the картошки in this case is taking the negative form of картошка. I assume they must use картошка as a mass noun for “potatoes”. I hear my Russian customers say “картошка” a lot more often than “картошки”.
• my sister says that we don't have potatoes • my sister is saying that we don't have potatoes • my sister says we don't have potatoes (no THAT- totally OK in american english) • my sister is saying we don't have potatoes (no THAT- totally OK in american english)
in my eyes there are four options here, no?
Could this be translated as “my sister says that we’re out of potatoes”?
My first answer was: "My sister says that we are not potatoes." This makes more sense.
In English, you wouldn’t use “telling” without including the person she’s telling it “to”. Ie: “my sister is telling ME...”
Good question, I want to know too. I ‘think’ it’s because картошка doesn’t really have a plural, and картошки is just genitive.
картошка is grammatically singular but plural in meaning, so нет картошки is "no potatoes" expressed with the genitive singular.