Expressions of time with на, за and через

[chouchou61.livejournal.com]

I'm having difficulty understanding which preposition to use in the following examples:

Она задумалась ___ минуту.
Он уехал ____ год, и ____ год мы не получили от него ни одного письма.
 

Мы остановились около рынка ___ полчаса.  ___ полчаса мы купили всё, что нам было нужно.
Сейчас у меня обед, я планирую обсудить этот вопрос ____ час.

More than simply getting the answers to these exercises, I'm hoping that one (or more) of you can come up with a combination of explanations and examples that will sink into my old brain. :)

Comments

[cassandraclue.livejournal.com]

A good way to tackle these to think about the cases that these prepositions govern. Like, за can take dative, so за минуту. The other part is to think about what the sentence means.

НА год--for a year

ЧЕРЕЗ час--in an hour. It's definitely not going to be на or за, because he's PLANNING on discussing the question.

I hope this helps and is correct... this kind of stuff has always been one of the hardest parts of Russian for me and I only understood it OK once I started using Russian in everyday life. So you're definitely not alone in having problems with this kind of stuff. :)

[ovd-off.livejournal.com]

"За" is never used with Dat. Here is always Винительный падеж (Accusative).
Actually, "за" + time = during (за минуту, за секунду, за час, за месяц, за год etc. ;
"на" + time = for (на + Асс. на минуту, на секунду, на час);
"через" + time = in (через + Acc.) через минуту, через секунду, через час.

[cassandraclue.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I never really thought about it, so I thought that за секунду and за минуту were секунд and минут in dative, not секунда and минута in accusative, and I don't think anyone's ever corrected me because I generally say the diminuitive forms in conversation anyway.

I think I'm getting it ...

[chouchou61.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the simple translations to get me started.

[dinasty.livejournal.com]

I might try, but I'm not really good in explanation :)

The difference is a meaning.
"На минуту", "на год", "на полчаса" means "for a certain amount of time". "Он уехал на год" means "he left for a year".
"За" with a time interval means "in (or within, or through) a certain amount of time".
"Через" means "after".

So, to your examples.
The first one "она задумалась __ минуту" means that she spent some time on thinking, "she's been thinking for a minute". A preposition "на".
"Он уехал __ год" - he left for a year, preposition "на". The second part of the sentence is giving a hint here: they are looking for his letters hence he left already for a long time.
"__ год мы не получили от него ни одного письма" - you'll translate it meaning that through all the year noone got any letter form him. Here is "за".
"Мы остановились около рынка ___ полчаса" - again, spent some time near to the market, "stopped for a half an hour", preposition "на".
"___ полчаса мы купили всё, что нам было нужно" - has, to be honest, two opportunities: to say that "after half an hour we've bought whatever we needed" or to say "within half an hour". The second one is just more natural, since you are not buying things exactly after the certain time. You are normally doing the shopping steadily through the time you have, and this is what preposition "за" gives here.
The last one again might be having opportunities as above, but here we have different context. Speaker is busy now but gonna be free after some time to solve the matter. So, the preposition "через".

Hope this helps.
Ask if not :)

[oryx_and_crake]

This is not really a good explanation, because "in" (e.g. I'll be back in an hour) means exactly "я вернусь через час".

[dinasty.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that's what I forgot to think about.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

It's that part of the grammar that you need to simply memorize. There isn't much to explain here. Every preposition has its own uses alone, together with a verb, or in specific situations.
I could ask the same thing in English:
We stopped near the market ___ half an hour. ___ 30 minutes we had all the necessary purchases made.
What would be explanations? I think you simply need to learn how prepositions work when applied to time.

[chouchou61.livejournal.com]

Well, neighbor (I see that you're also in the Seattle area), you're right. I need to memorize these prepositions with all of their varying meanings. But it would do no good to simply memorize the words without any understanding of their context. I needed some way to anchor them. The community, as a team, has given me quite a few. Thanks to all.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Their context is time. They have pretty clear meanings when we're talking about time. I really see nothing to _explain_ here, unless we have different understandings of what to explain means. You just need to memorize the combination of the word + its meaning. OK, we could add the 3rd ingredient, the case for the time. Let me say it in maybe another way. If you yourself provided the answers and they weren't right (you knew that because the teacher said so or you just had doubts and we confirmed the incorrectness) and you provided your own explanation of why you chose the wrong answers, we'd see where you're coming from and what you need to be explained. It very often happens that wrong answers are either a result of some misconception or confusion in unclear/complicated situation or both. I see no problems with the use of these prepositions in the context of time. While I could be wrong in not seeing those problems (since Russian is my mother tongue), you expressed no doubts or misunderstanding of your own, which I chose to interpret that you indeed need to memorize. Don't get me wrong. It's the right thing to ask for explanations and not just right answers when learning a language. But for us to explain something to you you have to tell us what you don't understand or show your mistakes, which you didn't.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Comrade, не катите бочек попусту еще и переходя на ты and please do comment in English as required by the community rules. I asked the original poster to describe his problems/difficulties/etc, to which he wanted explanations and clarifications. You normally don't ask for those, if everything's clear, right? And if something's not clear, you should be able to tell about it, at least something, right? Now go look at what the original poster told us about the problem. Seems like nothing to date. Please don't educate me on not seeing problems in my native language due to me being its native speaker. I know that well already and this community is also useful to me.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

I didn't offend or insult the original poster (didn't call or compare with something/someone bad), I demanded that he voice his problems, the actual ones he was experiencing. I'm not a cop, I'm just trying to point out that a malformed or unstated problem has no good solution. One need to bear that in their mind when solving any kind of problem or seeking external help for any of those. In essence, he could have just as well asked to provide answers to his homework (or whatever that was). Anyhow, I think I made my point clear.

The reason I asked not to educate me was because I inferred from your reply that you implied that I didn't know about the nuances or even was unaware of such. Yet I stated several times, that I was aware of certain unobvious things and there were probably many more of them. If you didn't want to make this point (to interpreted this way), why did you say/write what you did? Was it just an extended form of "+1"? :)

And no, I'm not going to correct your English. You see, it's learn_russian, not ru_learnenglish. :) Btw, if you want any help with your English, don't behave as a careless or uneducated kid -- write properly (I is capitalized, u is written as you, there're no whos, behavin and internetz). If you continue to write like this, chances are you won't find much help because people won't like getting through the jungles of what you write. Don't make it harder for them.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

You don't seem to get my point (2 points already). OK. Now go look up my other posts in the community (communities), and you'll see that I too explain things (if I find it possible since not everything appears logical) and help out. But as you put it, sometimes (yes, sometimes, not every time, so don't accuse me of being generally unhelpful) I feel the right to point people at what they are doing wrong -- that's also part of helping. If I see somebody not doing their share of work and only constantly asking to provide answers to their homework problems, I will point that out (I have done this once -- the person truly deserved that by their repeated actions for a significant period of time).

[bartoli.livejournal.com]

на + verbs of motion, остановиться, опоздать, etc.

за + perfect. verbs only (result)

[ovd-off.livejournal.com]

How about:
Я здесь всего на час; сдаю/сниму квартиру на месяц (no verb of motion).
Обычно я делаю (imperfective) домашнее задание за час, а сегодня сделал (perfective) за полчаса.

[bartoli.livejournal.com]

"сдаю/сниму квартиру на месяц (no verb of motion) "
See "остановиться, опоздать, ETC."
___________________________________
"я здесь на час" - как-то не по русски
____________________________________
за + perfect. verbs only (result)

Unless we're dealing with repetitive actions

[widder-mg.livejournal.com]

Well, за refers to a period it will take you to do something, and на refers to a period for which you are planning to do something (or perhaps the period during which you did something). So, if you say Я сниму квартиру на месяц, it means that you are planning to live in this flat during one month only. And if you say Я сниму квартиру за месяц, it means that it will take you the whole month to rent a flat. Через refers to a period that will expire between the moment of speech and the intended action. So, if you say Я сниму квартиру через месяц, it means that you'll rent a flat "a month after now".
Hope it's helpful;)

[chouchou61.livejournal.com]

That helps ALOT. Thank you!

[widder-mg.livejournal.com]

Всегда пожалуйста;) It's a pleasure for me, really.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that blanks 1 and 4 could be left blank.
«Она задумала минуту.» (или «одну минуту»)
«Мы остановились около рынка полчаса.»

Возможно я, как обычно, путаю. Исправьте если я не прав.

[hyyudu.livejournal.com]

You mixed up verbs "задумать" and "задуматься".
Задумать means to have an intention of doing something, e.g. Пираты задумали зарыть свои сокровища
Задуматься means to be engrossed in thoughts, like here in this example
In the second case a preposition is necessary. Which one - depends on what are you planning to say. dinasty explained it here (http://community.livejournal.com/learn_russian/895368.html?thread=13813640#t13813640)
Here also can be some variants. One, the most probable, is given above. The second is they were walking in a city during half an hour and then stopped near a market"

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

Walking in *the* city *for* half an hour. ;)

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

Да и путался глаголами, извините.

[hyyudu.livejournal.com]

Прошу прощения. Впредь буду объяснять по-русски. Языковой практики уже лет шесть не было.

[maceochi.livejournal.com]

Сейчас я совсем путался)) Вы кому будете объяснать по-русски - мне? И шесть лет по-английски не говорил?

[hyyudu.livejournal.com]

Нет, другим. А то странно получается - объясняю фактически верно, а грамматически неправильно.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

The working language of this community is English (see the rules).

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

The working language of this community is English (see the rules).

[hyyudu.livejournal.com]

thanks

[windy-corner.livejournal.com]

Она подумала минуту.
Мы простояли/пробыли у рынка полчаса.