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- "У мальчика есть мама?"
54 Comments
527
Малчик has no ending vowel, so its genitive case is to add the vowel -а. The vowel -ы is added in the genitive case to words that end in -а or -я.
143
Мама is the subject of this sentence, so it's in the nominative case, not the accusative. Accusative is used for direct objects. There are no direct objects in the Russian version of this sentence, only in the English translation. The literal translation of the sentence would be something like, " (A) mother exists at (the) boy."
Nope, it's Genitive here in Russian. I also took a while to figure it out.
Case 1. Person x owns thing y. Only x is in the genitive (possessor).
Case 2. X owns none of y. Both x and y are in the genitive.
Case 3. X owns some (eg lots or a little) of y. Again, both x and y are in the genitive.
For cases 2 and 3, the trick is to imagine ownership of a share/ portion/ fraction of the whole. Then the Genitive makes sense.
1628
Perhaps because "mama" in English is more a form of address than a descriptive noun like "Mom" = informal "Mother".
In other words, we use "mama" when talking to our mothers ("Mama, can you...."), but refer to them as "Mom" when talking about them. "My Mom is...."
That's not a hard and fast rule, but "My mama is..." is a little odd.
1628
From a source I don't have a cite for:
Genitive case is used to show that something (somebody) belongs or refers to something (somebody)...
<pre>берег реки the bank of the river
</pre>1628
The у is part of a phrase: "y [person/thing] есть [something]" which means literally "by [person(s)/thing(s)] is/exists [thing(s)]". That is transliterated in English into a more idiomatic phrase, "The [person(s)/thing(s)] has the [thing(s)]"