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.

Why is мало used here? What’s the difference between мало, немного, and маленький?

All three are different:

1. мало

   • Means “little, not enough”, often with a sense of insufficiency.
   • Used with uncountable nouns or plural nouns:
     
     • У меня мало времени. – “I have little time (not enough).”
     • У него мало друзей. – “He has few friends (too few).”

2. немного

   • Means “a bit, some, a little”, more neutral, without a strong “not enough” feeling.
   • У меня немного времени. – “I have a bit of time / some time.” (There is at least some.)

3. маленький

   • An adjective meaning “small” in size.
   • маленький дом – “a small house”
   • You normally don’t say маленькое время for “little time” in this sense; that would be wrong or very strange.

So мало времени = “too little time / not enough time,” which matches the typical idea behind the sentence.

Why is it времени and not время after мало?

Because мало (like много, немного, столько, etc.) normally requires the genitive case for the noun that follows.

• мало чего? – мало времени
• много чего? – много времени

Время is a neuter noun with an irregular declension. Its singular forms are:

• Nominative: время (what? – time)
• Genitive: времени (of what? – of time)
• Dative: времени
• Accusative: время
• Instrumental: временем
• Prepositional: о времени

So after мало, we must use the genitive singular времени: мало времени.

Why is it времени (singular) and not a plural like времён?

In the sense of general “time” as a resource (“time to do things”), Russian treats время as uncountable, similar to English time.

• У меня нет времени. – “I don’t have (any) time.”
• Мало времени. – “(There is) little time.”

The plural времена / времён is used for periods/epochs:

• тяжёлые времена – “hard times”
• времена Петра Первого – “the times of Peter the Great”

Here we mean time as a resource in the evening, so we keep it in the singular, genitive: мало времени.

Why is вечером used, and why is there no preposition like в вечером?

Вечером is the instrumental singular form of вечер (“evening”), but in practice it functions almost like an adverb of time, meaning “in the evening / during the evening”.

Russian often uses the instrumental case without a preposition to indicate time when:

• утром – in the morning
• днём – in the daytime
• вечером – in the evening
• ночью – at night

So вечером already means “in the evening”; adding в (в вечером) would be wrong.

You can also say:

• По вечерам у меня мало времени. – “In the evenings (regularly), I have little time.”

По вечерам emphasizes habitual / repeated time (“on evenings in general”), while вечером can refer to a typical or specific evening depending on context.

Can I change the word order, for example: Вечером у меня мало времени or У меня вечером мало времени?

Yes, Russian word order is flexible. All these variants are grammatical; they just shift the emphasis slightly:

1. У меня мало времени вечером.
   Neutral; focuses first on “I have little time”, then specifies when.

2. У меня вечером мало времени.
   Slightly more emphasis on the evening as the time when the lack of time applies.

3. Вечером у меня мало времени.
   Starts with “In the evening”, so it highlights the time frame first. This is often a natural choice when contrasting with other times:

   • Днём у меня много времени, а вечером у меня мало времени.
     “In the daytime I have a lot of time, but in the evening I have little time.”

All three are fine in everyday speech.

What’s the difference between У меня мало времени вечером and Вечером у меня нет времени?

Both talk about lacking time in the evening, but the nuance is different:

• У меня мало времени вечером.
  “I have little time in the evening.”
  → There is some time, but not much. It sounds like “I’m quite busy, I don’t have a lot of free time.”

• Вечером у меня нет времени.
  “In the evening I don’t have (any) time.”
  → Stronger: no time at all. Practically, “I’m not free in the evening.”

So:

• use мало времени if you want to say “I’m short on time”;
• use нет времени to say “I have no time”.

Could I say Мне мало времени вечером instead of У меня мало времени вечером?

You can say Мне мало времени, but it has a different structure and meaning.

• У меня мало времени.
  Literally: “At me there is little time.”
  Neutral statement about how much time you have.

• Мне мало времени.
  Literally: “To me, [it is] little time.”
  This sounds like: “It’s not enough time for me.”
  It’s more about your subjective feeling that the time is insufficient.

Examples:

• Мне мало пяти минут. – “Five minutes is too little for me.”
• Мне мало одного дня. – “One day is not enough for me.”

So Мне мало времени вечером would sound like:

• “The time I get in the evening is not enough for me (I need more).”

Grammatically correct, but in many contexts У меня мало времени вечером is the more neutral and common way to describe your schedule.

Is this sentence natural and common in Russian, or is there a more typical way to say it?

У меня мало времени вечером. is completely natural and normal Russian.

Depending on context, people might add свободного (“free”) to be clearer:

• Вечером у меня мало свободного времени.
  “In the evening I don’t have much free time.”

But your original sentence is stylistically neutral and something you would definitely hear in real life.

How should I pronounce this sentence, and where are the stresses?

Stresses:

• У меня – у меня́ (stress on -ня́)
• мало – ма́ло (stress on ма́-)
• времени – вре́мени (stress on вре́-)
• вечером – ве́чером (stress on ве́-)

So overall:

• У меня́ ма́ло вре́мени ве́чером.

Some pronunciation notes:

• У меня sounds like у меня́ [u mi-nyá]; ня is soft (palatalized n).
• In ма́ло, the о at the end is unstressed and reduced, sounding closer to ≈ ма́ла.
• In вре́мени, the unstressed е after the stressed syllable is reduced: вре́мени ≈ [vrʲé-mʲi-ny].
• ве́чером: ч is [ч] (like “ch” in “church”), р is rolled or tapped.

Saying it smoothly:

• У меня́ ма́ло вре́мени ве́чером. (one even, flowing phrase).