Questions & Answers about У нас нет мяса и рыбы.
Why does the Russian sentence use и (and) when the English translation says "or"?
In Russian, when listing things you don't have, you usually just use и (and). A literal translation is "We do not have meat and fish," but native English speakers naturally say "meat or fish" in negative sentences.
Why do the words for meat and fish change to мяса and рыбы?
The word нет (there is no) always requires the nouns following it to be in the Genitive case. To show that these things are missing, the neuter noun мясо changes its ending to -а (мяса), and the feminine noun рыба changes its ending to -ы (рыбы).
How does у нас нет mean "we do not have"?
Russian doesn't typically use a direct verb for "to have." Instead, it uses the preposition у (by/at) followed by a person in the Genitive case. Here, the pronoun мы (we) becomes нас. Combined with нет, the phrase literally means "by us there is no."
Since the current lesson focuses on его and её, how would I change this sentence to say "he doesn't have"?