"В это время я был дома."

Translation: At that time I was at home.

[Fabian837105]

Working in my alibi skills.

[114.9zzCN3h8tbW0]

Why isn't it "В этом времени..."?

[elsantodel90]

Accusative is used. Accusative case is quite common with time expressions. http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/time.html

[Odehia]

Wouldn't accusative be something like в эту времю ? Looks like nominative for me. I'm finally really confused about all those cases and exceptions.

[keinemeinung]

@Odehia - If Время were feminine you would be 100% correct. But Время belongs to a small group of neuter words that end in -я and have weird declensions. Neuter words look like their nominative form even in accusative case. The other words include:

Бремя (burden), вымя (udder), время (time), знамя (banner), имя (name), пламя (flame), племя (tribe), семя (seed), стремя (stirrup), темя (crown of the head, not sure how common this one is >)

[Odehia]

Thanks a lot for the explanations and the list (so I won't be confused with those words too).

[Marco828568]

Really helpful, thanks a lot!

[RandiAnders]

All right, so...why is "this" marked incorrect? Seems a little nitpicky to me.

[elarue53078]

"I was home at the time." - that would probably be the more common way to say it in English, (although "at that time" would technically work as well) and especially since there isn't a word for "the," that answer should be marked as correct, no?

[SoftlyJazzMadrid]

Well, it depends on what we want to say: "It's eight o'clock now. At this time yesterday I was at home." "Where were you yesterday at eight p.m.? - I was (at) home at that/the time".

[skuul88]

Yes it should. Same answer because it is what any native speaker would say

[amaybury]

Ohhh, first past tense word, exciting

[AlexBorealisMay]

Just one more thing...

[Apahegy]

Is время accusative here?

[keinemeinung]

Yep!

[egyHX2SL]

We English would be more likely to say" I was at home then". It means the same as" then " implies a specific time. My answer should be accepted.

[domger]

"Was" is paste tense, but it seems this sentence isn't paste tense in Russian?

[Henry132109]

был is the past form for быть

It's masculine and singular (so the speaker should be male from this sentence)

[milliemontenegro]

So, if it were a female person speaking, would it be "в это время я была дома"?

[elsantodel90]

Yes.

[SG2U8]

Я механически пропустил букву t

[Jamie1531]

"At this time" hss no meaning in English in this context. "At this time yesterday" makes sense but is iffy. An English speaker woukd never say this.

[LKusdemir]

By this time.

[mtak-]

"I was at home during this time"
is this also valid?

[egyHX2SL]

My query does not relate to this discussion sorry. Recently a Russian friend sent me a message in which I didn't,t recognise lots of letters. After spending hours searching I found out that it was Russian italic based on cursive. In it some letters changed from ordinary Cyrillic e.g." m became t". This meant I had to translate into the usual alphabet before I knew what had been sent! Maybe a few lessons on this would help!