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родительный падеж = genitive case. A russian said it, I just translated it in english. But I don't know why.
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Does this mean "we were waiting the whole night" - or - "we were waiting for the night to begin"?
It means "We were waiting for the night to begin."
"We were waiting the whole night." is "Мы ждали всю ночь."
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Почему нельзя "we have been waiting for the night" ? Ведь время не дано?
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In your sentence, "waiting" continues to the present, or very recently.
In "We were waiting", the action was in progress at a particular time in the past, for example "We were waiting for the night, bu the mayor told us to start the fireworks". The particular time is when "the mayor told us". A simpler example: "We were waiting for the night at 8 p.m.
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This seems like an odd sentence to me as a native AmEn speaker.
Where does "for" come from? I wrote "We were waiting the night" and got the exercise wrong. Why?? There is no для.
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The Russian sentence does not need the word "for," because ждать takes the genitive case, without a preposition. The preposition is only required for the English translation.
