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

[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).