"Are there people at the bank?"

Translation: В банку є люди?

[Cogitos]

What's wrong with Є люди в банку?

[Pawel73418]

Why not Є люди в банку????!!!! It is slavic, it must be the same!

[DavidHowar450281]

What's wrong with "Є люди у банку?"?

[thezerech]

What role does "є" play in this phrase? A to be verb?

[sagitta145]

It plays a role of "there is" in English. It's really tricky since we skip it all the time in other cases...

• Люди в банку -- Люди (є) в банку (є is usually skipped) = The people are in the bank.
• В банку люди = В банку є люди (both are equally common) = There are people in the bank.

So it depends on the word order apart from having or not having "є".

[charli.bla]

You can ask also: Є в банку люди? I think it's better.

It's a verb. I am = Я є.
For example: I am beautiful = Я є вродливий = Я вродливий.

[sagitta145]

Є в банку люди? is colloquial, informal and heavily context-dependent. Sounds weird as a stand-alone.

The most standard way is (where?) є (what?): Тут є коти? В банку є люди?

To invert the word order чи is used: Чи є тут коти? Чи є в банку люди?

[charli.bla]

P.S. Without that verb (є) the sentence does not make sense.
For example: is anybody here? = Є тут хто-небудь? (є хто живий?)

[sagitta145]

That's an example of a spoken way of asking, yes :)

P.S. This particular sentence should not be without є, it changes the meaning from "Are there people at the bank?" to "Are people at the bank?"

[lozovskyy68]

Агов!? В чому проблема з "є люди у банку?"

[JohanBoonstra]

Why банку and not ' в банкі'. Why is this an exception for locative form?

[sagitta145]

Different words decline differently depending on the gender and the type of the ending.

Typically, for masculine in Locative the ending is -і if the noun ends with "softer" kinds of consonants. From my native speaker perspective, those consonants are easily softened by -і. For example, ні is very easy to pronounce, the н sounds soft like the Spanish ñ. But кі is hard and uncomfortable to pronounce, the softening of к is not so smooth.

So for example, these endings tend to have -і in Locative: -ж (на ножі), -з (у розрізі), -л (на столі), -м (у храмі), -н (у стані), -п (в окропі), -р (на дворі), -с (у лісі), -т (на капоті but в аеропорту). And all of the consonants are more or less easily softened.

The harder ones tend to have -у: -д (у саду, but for example also, у комоді), -к (у банку), -х (на даху).

As you can see, д and т are unclear, as their soft forms are quite OK. To be fair I myself had to search whether it's "в аеропорті" or "в аеропорту". I don't say this word often, so I forgot the form; and it sounds equally OK to me (so like, the neural network in my brain which decides what sounds natural and OK couldn't decide)

So, there is kind of a pattern, with some exceptions, I'm not entirely sure as I'm just basing this explanation on my feeling :) I couldn't find any "official" explanation so far.