Breakdown of У бабушки есть большой зонт.
большой
big
у
at, by
есть
is, there is, to have
бабушка
grandmother
Questions & Answers about У бабушки есть большой зонт.
Why does the sentence start with У instead of the word for grandmother?
In Russian, possession is usually expressed by saying "by someone there is something" rather than using a verb for "to have". У means "by" or "at", and it forces the following noun into the genitive case. So, У бабушки есть literally means "By grandmother there is".
Feminine nouns ending in -а usually change to -ы in the genitive case. Why is it бабушки instead of бабушкы?
You are right about the normal rule! However, Russian has a strict spelling rule: after the letters к, г, ш, щ, ж, ч, and х, you can never write the letter ы. You must write и instead. Since бабушка has a к before the ending, it becomes бабушки.
Why is зонт in the nominative (dictionary) case if the grandmother owns it?
In the Russian possession construction, the object being owned is actually the grammatical subject of the sentence. The sentence literally translates to "A big umbrella exists by grandmother." Because зонт is the thing doing the "existing", it stays in the nominative case.
Why does the adjective take the form большой here?