"У тебя есть телефон?"
Translation:Do you have a phone?
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Nope. Фон means "background". It is also a linguistic term unknown by most native speakers.
Since you, probably, did not know that meaning of "phone" in English, I think it is safe to assume you won't need it in Russian. "Background" is useful, though—just not in the historical sense. It is more like a literal background or something that figuratively serves as a background against which something else happens.
So, if I were to ask if someone had a phone in AE, most people would assume/know I was asking about a landline telephone. Where as if I needed to ask if someone had a mobile phone, I'd use the word "cell", or (in some dialects) a "mobile".
What, if any, correlation exists in Russian? If I ask for a телефон, would I be directed to the nearest landline?
Спасибо!
Nowadays, if you ask someone if they have a телефон, they'll most likely assume you mean a cell phone, especially in public away from any landlines. It's the same in English where a phone used to only be a landline because cell phones weren't as popular, however, if you want to be 100% certain about what you mean, you can always say "Мобильный телефон" or "Мобильник". Hope this helps!
1063
If this is asking about A (general) telephone, how would you ask "do you have THE (specific) telephone?" Is there a difference or is it context reliant??
Word for word, "У тебя есть телефон?" means "By you exists telephone?". In Russian, there's no real verb for 'to have' (there is, but it's only used in specific contexts). Instead, you say that whatever you have is 'near you'. This is why even though you're talking about you (ты), it becomes "тебя" in the same way it's "HE has a phone." but "There is a phone by HIM".
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What's the difference between this (and similar ones) sentence as a question and as an affirmative? If we can't even distinguish any changes in its intonation, how can we distinguish one from the other?