Checkpoint: One and Many

Three things this unit gave you

The unit added three habits, and underneath they are one habit. Russian marks with an ending what English marks with word order and a handful of small words: -ы or -и turns one thing into many, -ая or -ые ties a description to whatever it describes, and the frame у меня есть hands a thing to an owner. Read the endings and the sentence is already understood.

The plural endings on one page

Only the last letter of the singular decides. A hard consonant or -а gives -ы; -й, -ь, -я and each of the seven letters к г х ж ч ш щ give -и; a neuter -о gives -а and a neuter -е gives -я. The handful of words that ignore all of it – дома, друзья, люди, дети – are learned one at a time.

Это новые книги, а это старые словари.These are new books, and these are old dictionaries.

Whose thing it is

у plus the changed pronoun names the owner, есть says the thing exists, and нет says it does not – and then the thing itself moves into the genitive. The two halves behave differently on purpose: after есть the thing is the subject and keeps its plain form, while after нет the sentence has no subject left at all.

У неё есть маленькая машина, а у меня нет машины.She has a small car, and I do not have a car.