Thread: мы имеем двух детей

Hello everyone.I am new to the russian language so please be patient with me.

The language tutor I am using uses " у нас " when saying "we have" two children. Why is "мы имеем " not used for "we have"

большое спасибо - Eric

Originally Posted by barkeep

Hello everyone.I am new to the russian language so please be patient with me.

The language tutor I am using uses " у нас " when saying "we have" two children. Why is "мы имеем " not used for "we have"

большое спасибо - Eric

Мы имеем двоих детей, собаку и телевизор. For me it sounds more like "We owe/possess two children". It's both archaich and weird/ it's too literal and formal, too impersonal in everything to do with these two children. For the modern listener this sounds like if the children were the part the list of inherited things: two golden chandelliers, five framed portraits of unknown ancestors, two children of five and nine years (boys), a statue of Roman Godess (with the abscent nose), one turkish rug (burned in the center) and so on. Instead we use "У нас есть", it doesn't differ too much with "We have".

Do you owe а family? - Ты имеешь семью? - weird, wrong.
Do you have а family? - У тебя есть семья? - usual, right.

To prevent anyone's try to add the following information (and I have the reasons to think they certainly would appeare), I have decided to write it down by myself.

Иметь жену\детей can be taken (by spoiled foolish teenagers) as the act of the sexual possession.

Мы имеем двух детей sounds like we own two children. Although it's ok to use it.
"У нас двое детей" is more natural.

«У нас» is the best choice, without any chance of misunderstanding.

Originally Posted by Rtyom

«У нас» is the best choice, without any chance of misunderstanding.

Артём совершенно прав, у нас или у нас есть

Спасибо, сударь. Готов ометить, что ваш вклад не менее ценен, а где-то даже превосходит мой скромный... *смайлик, снимающий шляпу*

Originally Posted by Rtyom

Спасибо, сударь. Готов ометить, что ваш вклад не менее ценен, а где-то даже превосходит мой скромный... *смайлик, снимающий шляпу*

Я очень! *смайлик, снимающий шляпу и делающий поклон*

Originally Posted by barkeep

Why is "мы имеем " not used for "we have"

Well, I'd ask why is "there is at us" not used for "у нас есть" in English?... Can you answer?

"мы имеем двух детей" doesn't sound natural at all.

You asked a good question, but one whose answer probably requires a lot of study of historical linguistics. Since Russian and English come from a common ancestor, you would wonder why they are so different nowadays, and not only grammar, as you asked.

If I remember my grad school history of Russian correctly, the ancient Varangian language expressed possession in this way, and for some reason or other their neighbors, the Slavs, decided to use it instead of имѣти. The answer to your question is contained in the above posts, but you are probably not supposed to learn about иметь in first-year Russian.

Did you ever hear the song Bei mir bist du sheyn? = By me you are pretty. That's Yiddish, but a construction that resembles the Russian style of expressing possession. We don't use it in English except in the phrase "That's OK by me" and similar.

"To Be" Language
http://masterrussian.com/aa120199a.shtml

To make an example of a European "to be-language" (see MasterAdmin's link), Finnish is one.

[i]H

[quote=Leushka]To make an example of a European "to be-language" (see MasterAdmin's link), Finnish is one.

[i]H

[quote=Боб Уайтман][quote=Leushka]To make an example of a European "to be-language" (see MasterAdmin's link), Finnish is one.

[i]H

В некоторых ситуациях "у меня" звучит хуже.

Если б я был султан,
Я б имел трёх жён
И тройной красотой
Был бы окружён.

Originally Posted by Wowik

В некоторых ситуациях "у меня" звучит хуже.

Был бы я султаном - было бы у меня три жены!
Чем хуже?

И потом, это стихи.

Originally Posted by Оля

Originally Posted by Wowik

В некоторых ситуациях "у меня" звучит хуже.

Был бы я султаном - было бы у меня три жены!
Чем хуже?

И потом, это стихи.

"Он имел" - это его собственность (или что-то неотъемлимое).
"У него" - это его или собственность или он просто распоряжается. Не так солидно.

"Он имеет домик в деревне" - явно в собственности.
"У него есть домик в деревне" - может бабушкин или снимает.

This may have been mentioned already, but I'll offer my two cents here (bearing in mind i'm not a native Russian):

I've been taught that у кого-нибудь (есть) is used to convey the physical presence of something related to you, or your physical ownership of something, such as у меня большой стул. However, in my experience иметь is used to express possession of abstractions. By an abstraction, just to clarify, I mean something which is a noun but has no material existence - it cannot be picked up, touched or whatever. One such abstraction is freedom - свобода: Она имеет свободу, чтобы делать то, что она хочет. - She has the freedom to do what she wants.

Note that the thing possessed in the у кого-нибудь (есть) construction takes the nominative case, whereas after иметь it's a straightforward object of the verb and hence takes the accusative.

No doubt this is wrong, but as a mere student of Russian that's my attempt at an explanation. I hope it's helpful.

Originally Posted by Ryan91

Она имеет свободу, чтобы делать то, что она хочет.

It doesn't sound Russian.

I don't think the idea is right. An example:
Я меня есть ощущение, что он врёт.
Ощущение is an abstraction. But "Я имею ощущение, что он врёт" sounds very odd.

"Я имею свою мнение" sounds a bit odd, too.
"У меня есть свое мнение" is much more common.

"Я имею любовь" sounds very bad.
"У меня есть любовь" sounds fine.

And so on. We just rarely use "иметь".

OK. I guess I will simply avoid иметь in future. :P My teacher, who is English but has been teaching Russian for 30 years said that иметь was for abstractions, so I'll present this argument to him. I love being difficult.