"Мы ждали ночи."
Translation:We were waiting for the night.
49 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
it is in Genitive because "ждать" means waiting and therefore it is waiting FOR something. The preposition FOR isn't there because the verb Ждать doesn't need to use prepositions (as far as I read it before). However, still the wait is FOR something so what comes next in this kind of context has to be in Genitive. Remember: "масло ДЛЯ салатА"......?
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.
660
Does Russian have another form to express that things were already finished at the point in the past that you are referring to? Like "We had waited there for a couple of hours, but then we decided to go home."
Actually, no. Russian past tense has only two forms, imperfective and perfective, and the concept doesn't really translate directly into English. Your sentence would be "мы там ждали пару часов, но решили пойти домой". But this could also be the translation for "We waited there for two hours..." and "We were waiting there for two hours...."
Both «ждать» and «подождать» use the accusative when the object can affect its own arrival time. When the object cannot change when it arrives, the genitive is used.
In this case, night time always comes at the same time every night and night time cannot change when it comes, so the genitive is used.
For other users who just began this exercise on the past tense: The past tense doesn't distinguish by person like the present tense (me, you, he, etc). Instead, it distinguishes by gender, so there's a masculine form of the verb for a m. subject, etc... Also, it distinguishes by number, but only between singular and plural!
1597
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.
889
ждали is used here because the sentence refers to Мы(we) , a plural. if it was a man waiting it would be: ждал for a female waiting it would have been: ждала
471
Does ждал and подожди have a sense of waiting FOR something? I ask because when I first saw this sentence, I thought it meant We were waiting at night.