Questions & Answers about У коллеги начался кашель, и она стала чихать прямо на совещании.
Why does the sentence start with У коллеги instead of something like Моя коллега?
У + Genitive is a common way in Russian to show that someone has something happening to them, especially symptoms or sudden events.
- У коллеги начался кашель literally means At (my/the) colleague, a cough started → natural Russian for “My colleague started coughing.”
It focuses on the symptom/event (кашель) rather than making the colleague the grammatical subject.
Why is it коллеги? Isn’t the dictionary form коллега?
Yes, the dictionary form is коллега (Nom. sg.). After у, Russian uses the genitive case:
- у кого? → у коллеги (Gen. sg.)
So коллега → коллеги is just the genitive singular form.
Who/what is the grammatical subject in У коллеги начался кашель?
The grammatical subject is кашель (because it’s in the nominative and it controls verb agreement).
- кашель (masculine) → начался (masculine past)
у коллеги is a possessor/“experiencer” phrase, not the subject.