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- Topic: Russian >
- "У женщины уже есть яблоко."
42 Comments
230
I see no reason why that translation shouldn't be accepted. Next time you come across this exercise make sure to report it, in case you haven't already...
The object being owned in sentences describing "Having something" takes the nominative case.
Unless it's described with "Нет" in which case it would take the genitive case "Яблока".
After a "у" you have to use the genitive version of "женщина" that is "женщины" (same form as the plural version).
тебя is the genitive version of ты, as you can see here http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/pronouns.php
- 266
To the native English speakers:
Is it wrong to say: "The woman has already an apple"?
I don't know why, in this course I am always corrected when I make a sentence like that. Apparently Duolingo developers for the Russian course think that it's completely wrong to put ALREADY after the form of the verb TO HAVE. Are they right? Am I wrong?
Hey @ZeZeFortun, we would never say "has already" for the possessive meaning of "To Have". However we do say "has already" when using it for the past tense, so we would say "She has already bought the apple" rather than "She already has bought the apple".
- 266
Thanks edgreig. That's exactly what I learned when I was studying English. I don't why Duolingo keeps on saying it is wrong.
But thanks again, anyway!
- 94
Yes, it's wrong to say "The woman has already an apple" If you wanted to use this order you could say: "The woman has already (past tense verb) an apple" e.g. got/received/bought/taken/eaten/been given ...and this would change the meaning of "has" from possession (having something) to indicating a past action (having done something)
Яблоко and яблока sounds the same to me. Is it just the audio or do they sound the same in real life, too?
@Jana415365 - They do sound the same, as the stress is on the first syllable so the "o"'s sound like "ah"' s.
Check out declensions for words on Wiktionary, they put the stress markers on the words and it can help a lot: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%8F%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%BE
Can someone please explain to me why sometimes the word after the У х есть part is in genitive and sometimes it's not?
У Мальчика нет сестры --> Here the word (sister) and the person is in genitive
У женщины есть яблоко --> Here the word (apple) isn't.
@Luis9466 -
Your first sentence is an example of negation using нет. Нет basically acts like не есть, and in Russian grammar rules this type of negation requires the use of genitive case.
In your second sentence, there is no negation. Яблоко can be considered the regular, nominative subject of the sentence (if you were doing a literal translation to English, like, "An apple is by the lady").
In nominative case, женщины is plural (The women, or Women). Here, we have the preposition У (meaning at/by/near, or to show possession) which requires genitive case. Female gender endings change from -a/-я to -и/-ы in genitive singular, so Женщина becomes Женщины. If it were many women having an apple, then it would be У женщин (the ending drops off) есть яблоко.
