Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to tell time in Russian and name the days of the week, including the case governing time expressions.

Lesson Explanation

Days of the week (not capitalized, similar to the convention already seen for Spanish, French, and Italian in earlier-built Gabal courses): понедельник Monday, вторник Tuesday, среда Wednesday, четверг Thursday, пятница Friday, субботa Saturday, воскресенье Sunday.

To say “on” a day, Russian uses the preposition в plus the ACCUSATIVE case (Part 2, Lesson 3), not the prepositional — a genuinely important exception to the “в = location = prepositional” pattern from the previous lesson, since here в expresses a point in time, not a location: в понедельник (on Monday). Note среда and субботa, being feminine, shift to their accusative forms: в среду, в субботу.

Telling time uses the genitive case (previewed here, covered fully in Part 3, Lesson 1) for the hour when stating a specific time past the hour, and the ordinal number for the hour itself when it’s an exact hour: Сейчас три часа. (It’s three o’clock now — literally “now three hours.”) For time expressions with minutes, Russian genuinely counts toward the NEXT hour past the half-hour point, a structure with a similar logic to some Germanic time-telling conventions but expressed through case rather than a fixed idiom: Сейчас половина третьего. (It’s half past two — literally “now half of third,” counting toward three.)

Practice Questions