- Forum >
- Topic: Russian >
- "I have a map."
"I have a map."
Translation:У меня есть карта.
12 Comments
Есть is used when the focus/emphasis is placed on the existence of an object. У меня есть карта tells us I do indeed have a map of some sort. У меня карта tells us that you are referring to a specific map and you are letting us know that currently, you are the one who has it (as opposed to someone else). Basically, it means I have the map. I hope that makes sense
Oh, thank you so much for this idea about using есть! I think it will help many learners! 0_0
We were speaking about when we can use есть. It is obvious that we can leave есть in both examples. But we can't use есть in both examples.
Thanks for catching that! I've fixed it now. It was supposed to be in the first example.
Because you can't omit "есть" everywhere. In this case, we can't do this. My advice: always use есть, and you will never make a mistake!
Удачи!
I thought this to until I told my wife (native speaker) у меня есть болит голова. She said you есть doesn't make sense here.
у меня болит голова - is totally another sentence. Here, the phrase "у меня" doesn't mean "I have"! It means the literal sense "by me". So, the phrase "У меня болит голова" is translated like "By me, the head hurts" --- "My head hurts". As you see, no "I have" here! These are different sentences!
P.s. у means "by"/"at"
Absolutely, in Russian. In English of course we say "I have" in both cases. So telling a native English speaker to always use есть is misleading. It's better to understand the subtle differences as mightypotatoe has explained and then it becomes clear that these are two different ideas in Russian.
I agree that mightypotatoe's answer is much better than mine but my answer was about only the particular case - speaking about having simple objects, like map, house, child. I thought that such big and thorough explanation can be difficult for beginners (I know this rule -- I have already mentioned it in other threads). It's a good rule for the advanced learners.
У меня карта means "I have a map." There is no context here to indicate whether the existence of the map is in question, so why shouldn't у меня карта be accepted also?.
