У меня мало времени вечером.

I have little time in the evening.

Breakdown of У меня мало времени вечером.

• я: I
• вечером: in the evening
• время: the time
• мало: little

Questions & Answers about У меня мало времени вечером.

Why does the sentence start with У меня instead of just Я or я имею?

Russian usually expresses possession with the structure у + [person in genitive], literally “at/near someone there is…”.

• У меня мало времени вечером.
  Literally: “At me there is little time in the evening.”

This is the normal, idiomatic way to say “I have little time”.

Using я имею for “I have” is technically possible, but:

• it sounds formal, bookish, or unnatural in many everyday situations;
• я имею мало времени вечером would sound odd here.

So: for “I have X (time, money, a car, etc.)” in everyday Russian, think у меня есть / у меня мало / у меня нет + noun, not я имею.

Where is the verb “to be” in this sentence? Why is there no word like есть or быть?

In the present tense, Russian usually omits the verb “to be” (есть) in simple statements:

• Я студент. – “I am a student.”
• Она дома. – “She is at home.”

Similarly, with possession expressions:

• У меня машина. – “I have a car.”

You could say У меня есть машина, but есть is used only to emphasize existence (“there is / there exists…”).

In У меня мало времени вечером, the focus is on how much time, not on the sheer existence of time. So Russian simply omits есть, and У меня мало времени вечером is the natural form.