Questions & Answers about У двери стоит чемодан.
The preposition у (“at / by / near”) always requires the genitive case in Russian.
- The noun дверь (“door”) in the nominative (dictionary form) changes to двери in the genitive singular.
- So:
- nominative: дверь – “(the/a) door”
- genitive singular: двери – “of the door / by the door”
Because у takes the genitive, you must say у двери, never у дверь.
The form двери can be both:
- genitive singular: “of the door / by the door”
- nominative plural: “doors”
In this sentence, context and verb form tell you which it is.
- The verb стоит is singular, so it’s describing one subject (here: чемодан).
- Чемодан (singular) is clearly the subject.
- That means у двери must be “by the door” (genitive singular), not “by the doors”.
If it were plural “doors” with a plural subject, you’d get something like:
- У дверей стоят чемоданы. – “There are suitcases by the doors.”
(Here дверей is genitive plural, чемоданы and стоят are plural.)
Чемодан is the subject of the sentence, so it’s in the nominative case, which is usually the dictionary form.
- subject: чемодан (nominative singular)
- location phrase: у двери (preposition у
- genitive singular)
So the pattern is:
- У двери (where?) – “by the door”
- стоит (what is there?) – “stands / is (standing)”
- чемодан (who/what stands?) – “a suitcase”
If you changed чемодан to чемодана, that would be genitive and no longer the subject; it would either sound wrong or mean something different.
Стоит is the 3rd person singular of стоять, which literally means “to stand”.
Russian commonly uses verbs like:
- стоять – to stand (for vertically standing objects)
- лежать – to lie (for horizontally lying objects)
- сидеть – to sit (for seated things/people, or figuratively for being located somewhere)
- висеть – to hang
to express location instead of a neutral “is”.
So У двери стоит чемодан is literally “By the door stands a suitcase,” but in natural English we say “There is a suitcase by the door” or “A suitcase is by the door.”
The verb есть (“there is / there exists”) is often simply omitted in present‑tense statements. You would not say У двери есть чемодан for this meaning; that sounds odd.
Russian doesn’t have articles (a / the), so both ideas are usually expressed with the same sentence. Context decides whether you understand it as “a suitcase” or “the suitcase”.
У двери стоит чемодан can mean:
- “There is a suitcase by the door.” (introducing new information)
- “The suitcase is by the door.” (if both speakers already know which suitcase)
To put more focus on the suitcase as known information, you might also say:
- Чемодан стоит у двери. – word order highlights чемодан a bit more, like “The suitcase is by the door.”
But grammatically, Russian doesn’t mark the “a / the” difference; it’s all context and word order nuance.
Both orders are correct; the difference is nuance and what you want to highlight.
У двери стоит чемодан.
- Fronts the location у двери, so it feels more like “By the door, (there) stands a suitcase.”
- Common when you’re describing a scene or mentioning something new in that location.
Чемодан стоит у двери.
- Fronts the suitcase чемодан, like “The suitcase is by the door.”
- Common when you’re already talking about the suitcase and now you’re saying where it is.
Grammatically, both are fine; Russian word order is flexible and often used to manage emphasis, not to mark subject vs object like in English.
Yes, you can, and the meaning stays very close:
- У двери стоит чемодан.
- Возле двери стоит чемодан.
- Около двери стоит чемодан.
- Рядом с дверью стоит чемодан.
Nuances:
- у – very common, neutral “by / at / near”.
- возле – also “near/by”, slightly more explicit about close proximity.
- около – “around / near”; also quite neutral.
- рядом с – “next to / beside”; often feels a bit more specific about being right next to something.
All require the genitive too:
- у двери
- возле двери
- около двери
- рядом с дверью
(рядом с takes the instrumental: дверью, not двери.)
You need to make both the verb and the noun plural:
- У двери стоят чемоданы. – “There are suitcases by the door.”
Changes:
- стоит → стоят (3rd person singular → plural)
- чемодан → чемоданы (singular → plural nominative)
The prepositional phrase у двери stays the same, because the number of suitcases doesn’t affect the case of дверь.
You add the adjective in front of the noun and make it agree in:
- gender (masculine),
- number (singular),
- case (nominative).
For большой (“big”) and чемодан (masculine singular nominative):
- У двери стоит большой чемодан. – “There is a big suitcase by the door.”
If you put it in plural:
- У двери стоят большие чемоданы. – “There are big suitcases by the door.”
Standard stresses are:
- у дверИ – stress on И
- стоИт – stress on И
- чемодА́н – stress on А́
So, syllable‑wise (stressed syllables in caps):
- u dve-RI sto-IT che-mo-DAN
Older or regional pronunciation sometimes has стОит, but the modern norm is стоИт.
Yes, in informal spoken Russian it’s quite common to omit the present‑tense verb when describing existence or location:
- У двери чемодан. – literally “By the door (there is) a suitcase.”
This is understood as the same as У двери стоит чемодан.
However:
- With no verb, the sentence can sound more telegraphic or context‑dependent.
- In careful written or formal speech, У двери стоит чемодан is safer and fully explicit.