Great observation here, Fedor!!! As for the verbs that are used with the prep. У, we can think about it as "FROM" (when talking about people): Взять книгу У друга / to take a book FROM a friend Одолжить книгу У друга / to borrow a book FROM a friend Попросить книгу У друга / to ask a book FROM a friend Заказать мебель у плотника / to order furniture FROM a carpenter While with places we'd use "ИЗ": Взять книгу ИЗ библиотеки / to take a book FROM the library
It's my pleasure, I appreciate you being genuine when saying that you don't know why something is like this or like that in the language. Your topics are precise and really needed by learners, and your explanations are simple. That's a perfect learning cocktail.
а можно ли сказать взять книгу ОТ друга, вместо У друга.. и есть ли разница между ними У и ОТ ? (from) ещё одна вещь, У имеет значение как ОКОЛО, это синоними или нет ?
Correct me if I’m wrong but it means the ‘boy has a dog’ ? The literal translation is ‘boy ate a dog ‘ haha yea I find есть (to eat) very confusing the way it’s used
Recently started learning Russian and it was going pretty good to be honest and then i came accros the whole Y and having and i got totally lost on that subject.... So your video really makes a big difference and it starts making sense now. Thanks allot for this information!
Polish here. Although Russian is related to Polish, this construction is still strange for us to denote possession, as in Polish "U mnie jest..." literally means "At my place/location there is" even though a verb for to have in Russian exists - иметь.
I started learning Russian for 2 reasons: Because it uses a foreign Alphabet Because of cases. Cases intrigue me, i have a bit of experience in old latin and old greek wich also use cases. Cases give structure that i can’t Seem to see in other languages.
In other languages word order, articles and prepositions do the trick... One of the first things I was told by my Russian teacher was that word order in Russian is not as important as it is in other languajes, or not important at all.
It is called a reduction, and it's not literaly 'a', it's closer to a sound referented by 'e' in the word 'started', for example. And it happens always when the sound is not accented.
вы отличный учитель. Это очень полезный информаций. раньше я просто знаю,. У меня есть и У меня но сейчас все знаю об ( У). большое спасибо за видео. Афтаб Сарвар из Пакистана.
Let me try to express my understanding of the question in your request... When we using просить, we simply use it as a regular transitive verb that requires its direct object to be assigned accusative case; no matter the direct object stands for the person whom we ask, or the thing what we ask. By adding the coverbial/aspectual prefix с-, we slightly changed the original meaning of the verb, now, we have something meaning quite close to ‘to find out X by searching from Y’s top (down to its bottom)’, since с- implies the motion described by the verb having a direction ‘from top down’ (as well as many other things which are not relevant here). Just try to imagine, that, by applying to the prefix с-, you add ‘3-demensional’ nuance into what would be a ‘flat’ word. Now, the new word, спросить/спрашивать assigns nominative case to its subject/agent, as all transitive verbs do, assigns accusative case to its direct object/recipient, but also assigns genitive (governed by preposition у, of course) to its indirect object/resource. The valence formula looks a bit like what’s below: Z (nominative) finds out X (accusative) by searching from Y‘s (у + genitive) top (down to its bottom) The logic behind it could be understood purely rhetoric, we are using a metaphor to liken the resource of the questioned instance of searching to a physical location, like one’s home or working place, since we are searching things out of it ‘from top to bottom’. And guess what is the top area of a person if that person is likened to a building? His/her head and brain, exactly. Notice that, in English, ‘Y’s’ is the exact equivalence to Russian ‘у Y-a’; therefore, спросить/спрашивать, when used intransitively, just literally translates to ‘to find out by searching from Y’s top (down to its bottom)’, and since ‘from...top (down to its bottom)’ has already been implied by the presence of the prefix с-, while ‘to find out by searching’ being meant by the verb stem просить, and to an extent the subject is implied by the verbal declension for agreement, the only one argument left yet to be obligatorily realized is ‘Y’s’, i.e. ‘у кого’.
You've written something brilliant, but I can't make sense of it yet.Could you write examples of sentences, or even better, make a video on this topic.
POV: *when you are a math professor* *trying to get language degree* *simplifies complicated russian with algebra* *understood russian in math formulas*
Hi. Great clip as always. Thank you Fedor Can you pls explain the difference between "У меня есть дом" and "Я имею дом"? Both mean "to have" but is there any rule as when to use one instead of the other? :-) Спасибо из Португалии ;-)
In meaning they are identical. The first way is how native Russian speakers would say it. The second one is how a person that learnt Russian as a second language might say it, Russians don't generally use the construct "Я имею" unless it's in some regional or slang speech even though its perfectly correct grammatically. I guess it stylistically went out of use over the centuries.
Thank for this was helpful But i can not understand something meaning and grammer:Моё молоко у мужчины. I will appriciate that could any one help me about it
French language has "y" too. Il y a un chat. For example...Russian "y" and french "y" is maybe related to each other. After all they are both indo european. Right?
In finnish there is the adessiivi -lla and -llä wich works like "у". Minu-lla on auto = I have a car. Olen isä-llä = Iam at/in my farthers place . Vaivaan kysymykse-llä isää = I bother dad with a question.
Great video as always But with these types of videos I have some problem nailing which case I should choose as it just doesn't follow the English logic, for example in the video "Мой дом находится у моста" why do we use genetive case for мост as in English it would mean "near of the bridge" So please add the case information too so we know which one should we use Спасибо за видео ;)
У is always folliwed by the genitive case. It's a rule. As for English logic, "у" is close to "at" in English, but only when we use "at" to say things like... "He is at the door", "She is standing at the window", "Her son is standing at the bookcase." "У моста" - at the bridge.
@@americanstudyingrussian9062 mmm... Thanks, but again I just want to know which case should we use, another example that confuses me is this sentence "Ты всегда будешь моим героем" why do we use instrumental case for my hero (моим героем) as in English it would sound closer like he is my tool of a hero or something like that. What makes it have to be in the instrumental case? Just a suggestion tho :)
У would almost always require genitive case. You can relate it to English, but since Russian and English are different, it won't always follow English logic.
Personally, I prefer to look at the слова "у" as "along" in English. For example: I wanted to be more specific, but I ended up saying something *along* the lines of*"... "У меня есть щляпа" Along with me IS a hat." Or maybe; "Come along with me to the cinema!" I completely agree that "y"'s meaning for the most part, can be described with allocation, AND possession. Приятно видио.
Great video, I guess the relationship you are looking for is that y would translate to 'at' in English, so its like saying 'ask at dad'. Although you wouldn't say it like that in English, it would just be 'ask dad' it may help people understand the logic. But you are right its tough. Can you say 'она меня спросила' Or it must be 'она у меня спросила'?
Hi there :) As a native Russian speaker, I see no difference between these two sentences, and both of them are correct and do sound natural. Also, I'd like to clarify the meaning of the other word that can be translated into English as to ask - попросить (or просить as a non-finite form). In this case, you can also use both of these constructions (with or without y) but the meanings will be different, e.g: 'Она меня попросила (что-то сделать)' - 'She asked me (to do sth)' and 'Она у меня попросила' - 'She asked (sth from) me'. In the second situation, other words like взяла (took), одолжила (borrowed) etc. can be used as well. The difference is only, so to say, in the direction of an action: 'Она одолжила у меня книгу' - 'She borrowed a book from me' and, in contrast, 'Она одолжила мне книгу' - 'She lent me a book'. I hope it was useful :)
@@edrikudo1 that's very interesting. thanks for the long answer) I thought the direction of the action only came from меня/мне so its good to know. Also what is the difference between. Спросить и попросить?)
Russian is a crazy language, there’s no logic at all, it’s impossible to understand it! Bloody nightmare! А, стоп. Я ж русский - я это все как-то понимаю :) фух блин, аж испугался :)
i spose у меня can almost be thought of as like- "from me" in reference to an object, idunno that could probably go somewhere with more thought but my thinking energy is *pfft* so
Just imagine area with the owner. Then anything that exist in this area belong to the owner. When you want to know about person, his knowledge спросить у него To find something at his place - поищи у него To take something from his coat возьми у него в пальто, у него в кармане When somebody changes his plans , unpredictable - У него семь пятниц на неделе. When many people doing the job purely - У семи нянек дитя без глазу So basically У is at the area of something or someone
I know you hear this all the time, but as an American learning Russian, your content is invaluable. These type of videos help me understand weird scenarios that are hard to look up on the Internet and understand
Thank you for the explaination. This reminds me of the Finn Ugric Saami languages where there is a grammatical case called location indicating both direction (receiving, leaving) from and (being) at. Actually both having something and being at is similiar to Russian and even asking someone is also one of few verbs where you must use the case location regarding the person you are asking, indicating you receive the answers from him/her(s location/mind etc). Although Saami does not use prepositions but rather add an ending, a suffix -s (in singular), to subject or person's name or use a special possesive pronoun, actually a genitive case pronoun with an addition of -s (indicating location).
I should always say "Спросить у профессора" instead of "Спросить у профессор"? Do this have anything to do with the cases thing? Sorry, I don`t know anything about cases yet
Спросите у папы is always an advise or order. Спросить у папы can be a suggestion or also an advise / order if it is referred to Вы (уважительное) / вы (множ). .
interesting! also worth noting, that after у , is used the genitive case, for the subject. my Russian book didn't mention these other meanings, only "I have, she has" etc. у меня, у неё, etc. I know your channel is not big on the grammar side of it, which is great too, because often that gets in the way of conversation, worrying about grammar. but it's worth noting. it seems always used with genitive. I could be wrong! I never would have thought about using it with спросить or "to ask" in general. usually I would just say something like "спросил учитель" people don't seem to correct me... very interesting. thanks!
I'm a native Greek speaker and I find Russian quite similar and probably easier to learn because of the similarities. However, the pronunciation is another matter.
This comment will only be helpful to portuguese speakers but "Y" seems to be somewhat similar to "à" or "ao" in Portuguese because we also use it in these two cases: Vou à do meu irmão - I'm going to my brother's (house) Pergunta ao professor - Ask the teacher Though it doesn't apply to the use case "У меня еcт". That one is indeed weird :)
What about when someone calls your name by that "У"? My mistake might have been that I never questioned it because of the context that it was always in. Basically, my russian teacher seemed to use "У" right before calling my naem whenever she misses with me. I still don't get it but she sounds sarcastic. What confuses me is that she never used the genetive case on my name... maybe it wasn't У and it was something else.. I don't know.
Well! Now I am beginning to understand Slavic language. A friend of mine once said: Автогрейдер чистит Майкл на дороге. In fact he wanted to say: Michael is scrubbing the motor grader on the road.
у меня means simply at my (disposal) (there is) in my (ownership there is) at my (possession there is) Prep y means at У меня есть друг - There's a friend of mine
Howsit Fedor, great video as always. Languages tend to have different shapes of thought pattern, which is why different languages don't require the same words, as 'y' above. As a complete russian noob, I've so far felt that 'y' grabs something close to what in English we'd say "in the direction of/towards" but without physical form applied. In English, this phrase is't really required.
I live in USA, i speak Russian fluently because i was born in one of the Ussr countries. My daughter american born is not speaking the language. And i moved here when i was her age at 17. I speak Russian and she is learning the language now through an app,, so we have subscribed to this channel in addition. I have to say this guy is the best teacher Love his work. Grateful for his work
Regarding the ‘y’ used in a question - I related to English how we say ‘I have a question’. Would you say you could translate like, ‘I have a question to ask so-and-so’? I feel like thinking about it that way makes sense to me.
I think it's an interesting approach to the concept of possession, linguistically. Instead of saying "I have", as in english and many other languages, which implicates ownership, you humbly indicate that the object in question exists by/near you.
