Russian usually skips a verb for “have.” To say you own something, use у + the owner in the genitive + есть + the thing in the nominative: У меня есть машина means “I have a car,” literally “at me there is a car.” To say you lack it, replace есть with нет and put the thing in the genitive: У меня нет машины.
Published 16 September 2026
The first time you want to say “I have a car” in Russian, the dictionary betrays you. There is a verb that looks like “to have” — име́ть — but a native speaker almost never uses it for a car, a brother or a dog. Instead Russian says something closer to “by me there is a car.” Once you see that frame, a huge slice of everyday Russian falls into place, because the same little machine handles having, not having, and asking whether someone has something.
Here is the whole pattern in one line:
Two grammar words to name, then we drop the jargon. The genitive is the case Russian uses for the owner here — think of it as the “belonging-to / from” form of a word. The nominative is the plain dictionary form, the one that acts as the subject. In this sentence the owner (меня́, “me”) sits in the genitive after у, and the thing you own (маши́на, “car”) is actually the grammatical subject, so it stays in the nominative. English makes “I” the subject; Russian makes the car the subject and parks you in a little “at me” phrase.
The word есть means “there is / there are.” It does not change for singular or plural — У меня есть вопро́с (one question) and У меня есть вопро́сы (several) both use есть.
To move from “I have” to “you have,” “she has,” and so on, you swap the pronoun after у for its genitive form. These seven are worth memorising as a set, because they turn up far beyond this one construction:
| Person | “Has” form (у + genitive) | English |
|---|---|---|
| я | У меня́ есть… | I have… |
| ты | У тебя́ есть… | you have… (one person) |
| он / оно́ | У него́ есть… | he / it has… |
| она́ | У неё есть… | she has… |
| мы | У нас есть… | we have… |
| вы | У вас есть… | you have… (plural / polite) |
| они́ | У них есть… | they have… |
It is not only pronouns. Any owner named after у takes the genitive, and so does everything describing them:
| Russian | English |
|---|---|
| У бра́та есть соба́ка. | My brother has a dog. (брат → бра́та) |
| У А́нны есть вопро́с. | Anna has a question. (А́нна → А́нны) |
| У моего́ дру́га есть маши́на. | My friend has a car. (both words move: мой друг → моего́ дру́га) |
This is where beginners slip, so it is worth slowing down. To say you lack something, you replace есть with нет — which is just не + есть fused together, “there isn’t.” And here is the twist: after нет, the missing thing is not the subject any more, so it drops out of the nominative and into the genitive. Both halves of the sentence end up genitive.
| Have it (есть + nominative) | Don’t have it (нет + genitive) |
|---|---|
| У меня́ есть маши́на. | У меня́ нет маши́ны. |
| У него́ есть вопро́с. | У него́ нет вопро́са. |
| У нас есть план. | У нас нет пла́на. |
Notice маши́на → маши́ны, вопро́с → вопро́са, план → пла́на. Two phrases you will use constantly hide a small irregularity, so learn them whole rather than building them: У меня́ нет вре́мени (“I don’t have time,” from вре́мя) and У меня́ нет де́нег (“I have no money,” from the plural-only де́ньги).
You do not need a new word order to ask. The same statement, said with rising intonation — or written with a question mark — is the question:
— У вас есть вода́? — “Do you have water?”
— Да, есть. / — Нет, нет. — “Yes, we do.” / “No, we don’t.”
That bare Да, есть (“yes, there is”) is exactly what you will hear in a shop or café when you ask whether they have something. The second нет in Нет, нет is doing double duty — the first is “no,” the second is “there isn’t.”
One honest complication, because you will hear it. Russian keeps есть when the point is whether you have the thing at all. It tends to drop есть when everyone already knows the thing exists and you are really describing it — an adjective is doing the work, not the fact of ownership:
As a beginner rule of thumb: if you would stress the word “have” in English, keep есть; if you are really describing what the thing is like, you can let it go.
Change the middle word and the frame time-travels. For the past you use был / была́ / бы́ло / бы́ли, agreeing with the thing owned; for the future, бу́дет / бу́дут. Negatives use the fixed не́ было and не бу́дет, each still followed by the genitive.
| Time | Have | Don’t have |
|---|---|---|
| Now | У меня́ есть вопро́с. | У меня́ нет вопро́са. |
| Past | У меня́ был вопро́с. | У меня́ не́ было вопро́са. |
| Future | У меня́ бу́дет вопро́с. | У меня́ не бу́дет вопро́са. |
Watch the whole machine run in a thirty-second exchange in a café:
— Здра́вствуйте! У вас есть чай?
— Да, есть. А ко́фе?
— Ко́фе нет, извини́те. У нас то́лько чай.
— Хорошо́. У меня́ есть вопро́с: у вас есть Wi-Fi?
— К сожале́нию, нет.
In English: “Hello! Do you have tea?” — “Yes, we do. And coffee?” — “No coffee, sorry. We only have tea.” — “Fine. I have a question: do you have Wi-Fi?” — “Unfortunately, no.” Every “have” and “don’t have” in that dialogue is the same frame you just learned: есть for what’s there, нет + genitive for what isn’t (ко́фе happens not to change its ending, which is a small mercy of loanwords).
Turn each “have” sentence into its “don’t have” version — that means swapping есть for нет and moving the thing into the genitive. Say them out loud; check below.
It exists, and it is a normal verb — but for everyday things it sounds heavy or bureaucratic, the way “to be in possession of” does in English. Russians keep име́ть for abstract and fixed expressions: име́ть пра́во (“to have the right”), име́ть значе́ние (“to matter,” literally “to have significance”), име́ть в виду́ (“to have in mind / to mean”). For your car, your brother and your Wi-Fi, reach for у меня́ есть every time.
None of this is a table to survive; it is one small frame you reuse. Nail у меня́ есть and у меня́ нет with a few nouns you actually care about, and you can already ask for what you need and say what you’re missing. That is exactly the kind of pattern our course drills inside real sentences rather than as a chart — the genitive endings start arriving by ear. Start your free seven-day trial — no card →