Questions & Answers about У неё добрая душа.
Why is it неё here instead of её?
When third-person pronouns (like она, он, они) directly follow a preposition (like у), Russian adds an н to the beginning of the pronoun. So, у + её becomes у неё. If you were just saying "her soul" without a preposition, it would be её душа.
In English, "a kind soul" is the object of the sentence. Why are добрая душа in the nominative case here?
Because the Russian "to have" construction (у + person) literally translates to "at someone [is] something". The thing being possessed (добрая душа) is actually the grammatical subject of the Russian sentence, so it must be in the nominative case.
Usually, "she has" is translated as у неё есть. Why is есть missing in this sentence?
In Russian, you usually drop the word есть (is/exists) when describing an inherent characteristic, physical feature, or personality trait. Since having a "kind soul" is an attribute rather than a physical object she owns, есть is left out.
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