Breakdown of У бабушки сильная слабость, и у неё болит сердце.
и
and
она
she / it (for a feminine noun)
у
at, by
бабушка
grandmother
сильный
strong
болеть
to hurt, to ache; to be ill
сердце
heart
слабость
weakness
Questions & Answers about У бабушки сильная слабость, и у неё болит сердце.
Why do we use сильная (strong) to describe слабость (weakness)? Isn't "strong weakness" a contradiction?
In Russian, сильный (strong) is commonly used to mean "severe" or "intense" when describing physical symptoms, feelings, or weather. So, сильная слабость translates to "severe weakness" or "intense fatigue," even if it sounds like an oxymoron in English! You will also see this paired with pain: сильная боль (severe pain).
In the phrase у неё болит сердце, what is the actual subject of the sentence?
The subject is сердце (heart), which is in the Nominative case. In Russian, we don't say "She has a hurting heart" but rather "At her, the heart aches." That is why the pain verb болит is in the third-person singular form—it agrees with the body part doing the aching, not with the person experiencing the pain.
Why is it у неё instead of just у её?
When third-person pronouns (like он, она, оно, они) come directly after a preposition (like у), Russian adds an extra н- to the beginning of the pronoun to make it flow better when spoken. Since the preposition у requires the Genitive case, the regular Genitive её becomes неё.
What if multiple body parts hurt? Would we still use болит?
No, the verb changes based on the number of body parts! Because сердце (heart) is singular, we use the singular verb болит. If Grandma's legs were hurting instead, you would use the plural form болят to match the plural body part: у неё болят ноги.
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