Thread: У меня еcть or иметь

- Время, которое мы имеем, - сказал он, - это деньги, которых мы не имеем. Киса, мы должны делать карьеру.

Двенадцать стульев
Илья Ильф и Евгений Петров

Ruslish

Where does one draw the line between "Russlish" and "инглишкий"?

As with many things in Russian, there is a line drawn between the two, however to the foreign student of Russian the line is not always clear. The best way to determine which variant to use is through practice. For most things, and for the casual learner of Russian, У меня (тебя него) есть should do just fine 99% of the time, however, there are instances where иметь is preferred. The one that comes to my mind instantly is to have a right. Я имею право (for example) здесь находиться, would, in most cases sound better to the Russiasn ear than У меня есть право здесь нохдться, валяться, куруть, whatever the action may be.

On the other hand, if it were a group of people say, arguing with the police or something over the right to protest, they could feasibly say У каждого в России есть право выступать за... whatever (its not important) and it would also sound ok. Though, you could also say Мы все имеем право выступать... etc.

You really just need practice with the language in order to be able to distinguish it yourself.

However, someone above mentioned that имееть was similar to "own", which, it isn't. The Russian word for Own, or posses is обладать. As far as I know it must be a tangible object to use this word you can't (maybe you can) обладать правом but you can обладать ядерными ракетами ))