Breakdown of Вчера у моей дочери была высокая температура.
Questions & Answers about Вчера у моей дочери была высокая температура.
Russian usually does not use a direct verb meaning “to have” for possession in everyday speech.
Instead, it uses the structure:
- у + [person in genitive case] + быть (to be)
So:
- У моей дочери была высокая температура.
Literally: “By/at my daughter there was a high temperature.”
→ Meaning: “My daughter had a high temperature.”
The verb быть here appears as была (past tense, feminine) and carries the idea of “had” in English.
The preposition у with the genitive case is the standard way to express possession in Russian:
- у кого? – at/with whom? (genitive)
So:
- у моей дочери = “at my daughter’s / with my daughter”
- Combined with была высокая температура → “there was a high temperature at my daughter’s”
→ idiomatic English: “my daughter had a high temperature.”
This у + genitive construction is extremely common:
- У меня есть машина. – I have a car.
- У него была проблема. – He had a problem.
- У неё болит голова. – She has a headache.
Дочь (daughter) is the nominative singular form.
After the preposition у, Russian requires the genitive case, so дочь changes to дочери:
- Nominative: дочь – “(a) daughter” (as subject)
- Genitive singular: дочери – used after у: у дочери
So:
- моя дочь – my daughter (subject)
- у моей дочери – at/with my daughter → “my daughter has / had”
The possessive pronoun мой (my) must agree with the noun’s gender, number, and case.
- Nominative feminine: моя дочь – my daughter
- Genitive feminine singular: моей дочери – of my daughter / at my daughter’s
Because дочери is genitive feminine singular, the pronoun also takes the genitive feminine singular form моей:
- у моей дочери = “at my daughter’s / with my daughter”
In English, the subject is “my daughter”.
In Russian, however, the grammatical subject is температура (temperature), not дочь:
- температура – noun, feminine, singular, nominative → subject
- была – past tense of быть, feminine, singular → agrees with температура
- высокая – adjective, feminine, singular, nominative → agrees with температура
У моей дочери is a genitive phrase showing with whom the temperature was; it is not the subject.
Literally:
“Yesterday, at my daughter’s, there was a high temperature.”
Grammatically: the temperature “was”; the daughter just “has” it.
The past tense of быть (to be) agrees in gender and number with the subject.
Since the subject is температура (a feminine noun), the verb takes the feminine singular form:
- Masculine: был (он был)
- Feminine: была (она была)
- Neuter: было (оно было)
- Plural: были (они были)
So:
- температура была высокая – the temperature was high
→ shortened in your sentence to была высокая температура, but the agreement is the same.
In this sentence, высокая температура is a full noun phrase functioning as the subject:
- высокая – adjective (high)
- температура – noun (temperature)
The adjective высокая must match the noun температура in:
- gender: feminine
- number: singular
- case: nominative
So we get высокая температура (high temperature).
If the context is very clear, Russians can sometimes omit the noun and just say высокая:
- У неё вчера была высокая. (elliptical, colloquial)
But in a neutral, complete sentence, you keep температура.
This is grammatically possible but sounds unnatural and bookish in everyday Russian.
- The verb иметь (“to have”) is usually avoided in normal spoken language for simple possession and states.
- Russian strongly prefers у + genitive + быть for things like illnesses, temperature, problems, etc.
Natural options:
- Вчера у моей дочери была высокая температура.
- Вчера у дочери была температура. (usually enough to imply “fever”)
Use иметь mostly in formal, abstract, or technical contexts (e.g. иметь значение, иметь право, иметь возможность).
Yes, both are possible. Russian word order is relatively flexible, and вчера (yesterday) can move around:
- Вчера у моей дочери была высокая температура.
- У моей дочери вчера была высокая температура.
- У моей дочери была вчера высокая температура. (a bit more marked/emphatic)
They all mean the same thing; the differences are about rhythm and emphasis:
- Starting with вчера puts extra focus on the time.
- Starting with у моей дочери focuses more on who it was about.
All are correct in everyday speech.
In the present, Russian usually drops the verb быть (to be).
So instead of a literal “is”, you simply omit it:
- У моей дочери высокая температура.
Literally: “At my daughter (there) high temperature.”
→ Meaning: “My daughter has a high temperature.”
Past: У моей дочери была высокая температура. – had
Present: У моей дочери высокая температура. – has
Future: У моей дочери будет высокая температура. – will have
In Russian, saying that someone “has a temperature” often already implies “has a fever”.
Common, natural ways:
- Вчера у моей дочери была температура. – Yesterday my daughter had a fever.
- У дочери была температура. – My daughter had a fever.
You can add высокая when you want to stress that it was high:
- Вчера у моей дочери была высокая температура. – Yesterday my daughter had a high fever.
Yes, if it is already clear from the context who “she” is, you can (and very often do) use у неё:
- Full: Вчера у моей дочери была высокая температура.
- With pronoun: Вчера у неё была высокая температура.
This is completely natural once the person has been mentioned or is obvious from the situation.