Previously we discussed how the «у меня есть» construction can be equivalent to a I have construction, and we also discussed иметь, which means “to own, possess.” But if you look up иметь in some dictionaries, sometimes you will find something like this:

have /hæv/ n.: 1. иметь;

This sometimes leads to confusion: when can you use иметь for have, and when does that not work? Here are couple of rules of thumb:

1. When you want to know whether someone has a particular item on them at a particular moment, then you cannot use the иметь construction, you must use a variation of the есть construction:

(See this post for a discussion of the use of не in polite requests.)

2. When you want to know whether someone owns something, both the есть and the иметь construction are theoretically possible. Both are grammatical:

The normal way to ask the question is «У вас есть машина?»¹ But if you want a verb that is vastly more formal or emphatic, say when a lawyer is interviewing a suspicious client, then you might hear «Вы имеете машину?»²

3. There are dozens of phrases where иметь bears the tense of the sentence but the noun that follows it in the accusative case bears most of the meaning. For instance:

There are lots of phrases like this. Here are some examples:

¹ Bear in mind that the question «У вас есть машина?» is ambiguous. It can mean either “Do you own a car?” or “Do you have a car [at your disposal today]?”

² Bear in mind that «Вы имеете машину?» can only mean “Do you own a car?”, not “Do you have a car [at your disposal today]?” Thus if you want to be perfectly clear that you are asking about ownership, then can use иметь, but it will have either a vastly more formal or more emphatic sense than “у кого” phrases.

The primary meaning of the verb иметь is “to own, possess.” It's a fairly straightforward first conjugation verb:

The owner goes in the nominative case, and the thing owned goes in the accusative case:

Although all the sentences above are perfectly grammatical, I should point out that using иметь for “to own/have” is stylistically marked. It's more formal, higher style, and sometimes more emphatic, than the “у кого есть” construction, so don't automatically assume it's the best way to say “to own.” Soon we'll discuss the overlap between иметь sentences and «у кого есть» sentences.

Every once in a while when you have mastered some grammatical backflip, you discover that one is not enough: you have to do a grammatical double gainer. This is the case to say that someone “doesn't have” something or that “there isn't” something somewhere.

You recall that when a person has something, in Russian we express by saying “At so-and-so is such-and-such.” The person shows up in the genitive case as the object of the preposition у, and the thing the person has shows up in the nominative case, and the “there is/are” is expressed by the word есть:

When the person doesn't have something, the “doesn't have” idea is expressed in the present tense by нет, and the thing he doesn't have shows up in the genitive case.

The past tense of нет is always не было, and the future tense is не будет. Notice the contrast between these sentences. In the “have” sentences, the verb changes according to the gender/number of the subject. In the “doesn't have” sentences, the verb does not change for the subject because there is no grammatical subject (that is, nothing in the nominative case), and the verb defaults to neuter singular form:

These tricks also apply to sentences expressing sentences with the idea of “there is no” or “there was no”:

Every once in a while when you are studying a foreign language, you have to learn to do some grammatical contortion and say something in a way that seems bizarre in contrast to your native language. For us English speakers, learning how to say “have” in Russian is one of those.

In an English sentence like “John has a book.” John is the subject of the sentence. The thing that he has is the direct object. To communicate the same idea in Russian, you have to rephrase the sentence as “At John there is a book.” Specifically, when a person has something, the person shows up in the genitive case as the object of the preposition у, and the thing the person has shows up in the nominative case, and the “there is/are” is expressed by the word есть.

Есть is the present tense form of the verb быть, so if you want to put those sentences in the past or future, you use the past and future forms of быть to say “At John there was a book” and “At John there will be a book.”

When an organization (as opposed to a person) has something, then instead of using the preposition у, the prepositions в and на are used with the prepositional case. Thus “The university will have/has/had a dormitory” comes out:

“The post office will have/has/had a fax machine” comes out:

Actually these sentences can be translated two different ways. «На почте есть факс» can be translated either “The post-office has a fax machine” or “There is a fax machine at the post office.” If these types of sentences use prepositions other than у-в-на, usually “have” is not the best translation: