Questions & Answers about Я пил кофе вместо воды, и теперь у меня болит желудок.
Why does the sentence say у меня болит желудок instead of literally translating "my stomach hurts"?
In Russian, expressing physical pain uses a specific structure: у + [Genitive of the person] + болит (or болят) + [Nominative of the body part]. So literally, this translates closer to "At me, the stomach aches." The body part (желудок) is the actual grammatical subject of the sentence.
Why is there no word for "my" (мой) before желудок?
Russian usually leaves out possessive pronouns like мой (my) or твой (your) when talking about body parts, especially in this pain construction. Since you already specified у меня (at me), it is already completely clear whose stomach is hurting!
If plural body parts were hurting, would the verb болит change?
Yes! Because the body part is the subject of the sentence, the verb has to agree with it in number. Болит is the singular form used for one body part (like желудок). If you were talking about a plural body part, like your eyes (глаза), you would use the plural verb form болят: У меня болят глаза.
Why is воды in the Genitive case here?