"When I was little I did not have a mobile phone."
Translation:Когда я была маленькая, у меня не было мобильного телефона.
17 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
wouldn't it be grammatically correct to use the instrumental after "был" / "была" (even as it often seems to be omitted in colloquial speech?)
2741
У меня не было мобильного телефона could be translated literally as "There was no mobile phone at my side". Neither "I" nor "phone" is a subject of this sentence (at least in Russian); rather, it has no subject, so a neuter gender is used. Another example of a sentence without a subject: Темнело. - It was getting dark.
just thought I would chime in as well. I would love to know why "when I was young" is not using the instrument case. I believe that's what the grammar books say. Is there a rule I'm missing?
For me 'когда я была маленькой' sounds more natural than 'когда я была маленькая'.
I wrote the sentence from the perspective of a lady, and it was marked wrong. Когда я была маленькая, у меня не было мобылного телефона.
- 1024
Why is the short form of "little" not accepted? Unless I've completely misunderstood their usage, this seems like the perfect place to use the short form.
Когда я был маленьким, у меня мобильного телефона не было. This was rejected, do you know why?
Why can't we just omit был? Or, ehy should it even be there at the first place?
- 143
Of course it should be there. не было is the past tense of нет. The sentence wouldn't work with simply не in the present tense either.
Is "телефона" strictly necessary? I thought it was fairly common to just say "мобильного".
- 1231
Are both "Когда я был маленький" and "Когда я был маленьким" completely interchangeable, or is there some slight difference? Both are accepted for this.
What is wrong with Когда я была маленькая у меня нет мобильного телефона? Are there male chauvinist robots at work?