У меня иногда болит нога вечером.

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Breakdown of У меня иногда болит нога вечером.

• вечером: in the evening
• иногда: sometimes
• болеть: to hurt

Questions & Answers about У меня иногда болит нога вечером.

Why do we say У меня instead of using я as the subject?

Russian usually talks about pains and illnesses with a special construction:

• У меня болит нога. – literally: “At me the leg hurts.”

So instead of saying “I hurt my leg” (with я as the subject), Russian treats the body part as the grammatical subject and the person as the possessor: у + (genitive of the person).
This pattern is very common with body parts and health:

• У меня болит голова. – My head hurts.
• У него болит спина. – His back hurts.

What case is меня in, and why is that case used?

Меня is the genitive singular of я.

The preposition у (“at, by, with”) almost always takes the genitive case.
So:

• у меня – at me / I have
• у тебя – at you / you have
• у неё – at her / she has

In this sentence, у меня indicates possession (it’s my leg that hurts). It’s the same grammatical pattern as у меня есть книга (“I have a book”), just with болит нога instead of есть книга.

Who is the grammatical subject in this sentence – я or нога?