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- "When I was little I did not …
"When I was little I did not have a mobile phone."
Translation:Когда я был маленький, у меня не было мобильного телефона.
17 Comments
wouldn't it be grammatically correct to use the instrumental after "был" / "была" (even as it often seems to be omitted in colloquial speech?)
2103
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?
- 1508
I assume that the negation не было causes moбильного телефона to be cast in the genitive.
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.
- 396
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.
- 571
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".
