Questions & Answers about У меня болит нос.
In Russian, physical states and possessions are often expressed with the structure у + [person in genitive].
- У меня болит нос is literally: “At me the nose hurts.”
- This is the most natural way to say “My nose hurts” in Russian.
So instead of saying something like Я болю нос (which is wrong), Russian says that at you there is a nose that hurts: У меня болит нос.
Меня is the genitive form of я (“I”).
After the preposition у (“at, by”), Russian normally uses the genitive case to show possession or a state belonging to someone:
- у меня – at me / I have
- у тебя – at you / you have
- у него – at him / he has
So у меня is “at me,” and with болит нос it gives “At me the nose hurts.”
The subject is нос (“nose”), not я / меня.
Grammatically:
- нос is in nominative → this is the subject.
- болит is the verb (“hurts”).
- у меня is just an extra phrase showing whose nose it is, but it is not the subject.
So structurally it’s: [At me] [hurts] [nose].
Because нос is the subject, and subjects in Russian normally stand in the nominative case.
You would change the form if the word had a different role, for example:
- нет носа – “there is no nose” (genitive)
- к носу – “to the nose” (dative)
Here, the nose is simply the thing that hurts → nominative: нос.
Болит is the 3rd person singular form of the verb болеть (in learner materials usually given as “to hurt, to ache / to be ill”).
- болеть – to hurt / ache; to be ill
- он / она / оно болит – it hurts (one thing)
- они болят – they hurt (several things)
In У меня болит нос, болит simply means “hurts” or “is aching.”
Use болит with one body part (singular), and болят with several (plural):
- У меня болит нос. – My nose hurts.
- У меня болит голова. – My head hurts.
- У меня болят зубы. – My teeth hurt.
- У меня болят ноги. – My legs/feet hurt.
The verb agrees in number with the body part(s), not with the person.
You can say Мой нос болит, and it is grammatically correct, but:
- У меня болит нос is the most common everyday pattern for talking about pain or symptoms.
- Мой нос болит sounds more like you are contrasting it with someone else’s nose or stressing “my nose (not someone else’s) hurts.”
So in neutral speech about how you feel, У меня болит нос is preferred.
Yes:
- У меня болит нос. – Specifically “My nose hurts.” It names what hurts.
- Мне больно. – “It hurts / I am in pain.” No body part is mentioned.
You can also say:
- Мне больно в носу. – “It hurts in my nose.”
But the simplest and most typical way to say “My nose hurts” is У меня болит нос.
These mean something different:
- Я болен / Я больной – “I am ill / I am sick.” This describes your general health, not a specific body part.
- У меня болит нос – you might or might not be generally ill; you’re just saying your nose hurts.
So they’re not interchangeable. Use У меня болит нос when you want to specify the painful body part.
You change only the у + pronoun in genitive part; болит нос stays the same:
- У меня болит нос. – My nose hurts.
- У тебя болит нос. – Your nose hurts (informal “you”).
- У вас болит нос. – Your nose hurts (formal or plural “you”).
- У него болит нос. – His nose hurts.
- У неё болит нос. – Her nose hurts.
- У них болит нос. – Their nose hurts. (Context usually clarifies whose exactly.)
Yes, Russian word order is flexible. All of these are possible:
- У меня болит нос. – neutral, most typical.
- Нос у меня болит. – slightly emphasizes “the nose (of mine) hurts.”
- Болит у меня нос. – emphasizes the verb “it’s hurting (my nose).”
The basic grammar and meaning stay the same; the differences are in nuance and emphasis.
Болит is pronounced: [ба-ЛИТ], with the stress on the second syllable: боли́т.
- Not БО-lit, but бо-ЛИТ.
- Similarly, plural боля́т is stressed on the last syllable: бо-ЛЯТ.
Correct stress is important, because shifting it can make your speech hard to understand or sound unnatural.