In this lesson, we’ll be learning how to express to have and how to express absence.
| I. Expressing to have |
Expressing to have in Russian is drastically different. In English we simply use a verb, while in Russian we use a fixed construction that literally means by (subject) there is.
To make this construction, we use the preposition у, which requires the genitive case, followed by есть, which is a conjugation of the verb быть, and a noun in the nominative case.
If you look up the verb to have in a Russian dictionary, you’ll probably see the verb иметь. This does mean to have; however, its usage isn’t as common as you’d think, plus we’ve yet to learn actual verb conjugations. We’ll get there eventually.
We’ve declined nouns in the genitive case, now we’ll decline pronouns, personal pronouns! Sick of declining things? Get used to it, this is an endless activity in Russian. Cases are the heart and soul of this language.
On the left, you’ll see the nominative case and, on the left, the genitive.
| кто? | кого? |
| я | меня |
| ты | тебя |
| он – оно | (н)его |
| она | (н)её |
| мы | нас |
| вы | вас |
| они | (н)их |
Thus, we get the following forms:
| у меня есть у тебя есть у него есть у неё есть у нас есть у вас есть у них есть | + noun in nominative case |
Let’s look at some examples:
| У меня есть семья. I have a family. |
| У тебя есть время. You have time. |
| У нас есть уроки. We have lessons. |
| У вас есть компьютер. You have a computer. |
| У неё есть машина. She has a car. |
If you want to ask a question, the construction is the same. Just raise your intonation.
| У тебя есть мобильник? Do you have a cell phone? |
| У вас есть время? Do you have time? |
| У него есть квартира? Does he have an apartment? |
You could also use this construction when asking a question, but it’s a little more advanced:
| Есть ли у тебя машина? Do you have a car? |
| Есть ли у вас время? Do you have time? |
We’ll learn ли, its meaning and how it’s used in another post.
To respond to this question affirmatively, you can say the following:
| –У вас есть мобильник? –Да, есть. Do you have a cell phone? -Yes, I do. |
| II. Absence with нет |
Now what if you want to say I don’t have…? Well, we learned back in lesson one that expressing negation in Russian is usually very easy, just add не. But that is if you want to negate a verb.
If you want to express absence, use нет and the genitive case.
So, we can easily transform the construction we learned above into a negative one. Just substitute есть with нет. And don’t forget that we now need to put the nouns in the genitive case.
We are going to keep our nouns in the singular, because if we do plural with this construction, we’ll need to use the genitive plural. The genitive plural, unlike the genitive singular, can be very complex.
| У меня нет велосипеда. I don’t have a bicycle. |
| У тебя нет розы. You don’t have a rose. |
| У нас нет времени. We don’t have time. |
| У вас нет работы. You don’t have a job. |
| У них нет дерева. They don’t have a tree. |
This is going to take some practice, I’m sure.
| The neuter noun время [time], its genitive form is времени, has a peculiar declension. In fact, there are only 10 nouns in Russian that decline like it. We’ll explore its declension little by little. |
I think this might be enough for today’s lesson. See you in the next one!
| Last Edit: 12/14/2025. |
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