A couple of questions about a Russian text

Does “За несколько дней до Нового года” mean “for a few days until new year’s”? Usually the accusative case alone indicates the duration of an action, but here we have за.

Could someone please write out the numbers in this paragraph? I can’t hear the endings.

За несколько дней до Нового года ёлку украшают игрушками, гирляндами и конфетами. В этом принимает вся семья, даже маленькие дети. Украшенные ёлки стоят в квартирах и домах обычно две недели: с 30 декабря по 14 января. За это время вокруг них русские отмечают Новый Год, Рождество и Старый Новый год, который празднуется в ночь с 13-го на 14-е января.

Thanks for your help.

За несколько (много) дней (месяцев /лет etc) до … is a set phrase you just have to know. There’s no need to worry about the preposition За.

Concerning the numbers in this extract:

  • с тридцатого декабря по четырнадцатое января
  • с тринадцатого на четырнадцатое
    I also remind that the ending -го must be pronounced as -во.

It means some days before the New Year.

4.3.2. Винительный падеж при обозначении срока: за три дня
Формы винительного падежа употребляются и с другими предлогами. Так, предлог за вводит временной промежуток, достаточный для совершения действия, ср.:
“Затем ювелирных дел мастера из Екатеринбурга за несколько дней изготовили медаль «За честную победу» из золота 760-й пробы.”

PS. В Беларуси украшенную ёлку стараются установить к 25 ноября, когда празднуется католическое Рождество. Эта ёлка стоит и в ночь с 31 декабря на 1 января, и 7 января (православное Рождество), и 14 января.

PPS. “the numbers in this paragraph” - what do you mean?

@ijoh
Nangel has deciphied the endings of the numbers.
But 95% of Russian endings are without stressss, it means we (=native speakers) pronounce them very unclear.
That’s why don’t pay to much attention to them.

Thanks, you’ve all been very helpful. Ress, I meant to write the numbers in letters so that I could see exactly how these time ranges are constructed. Now I understand.

Hi! =)))

The reasons why both Ress and Yevgeny failed to write the numbers using letters in Russian are different, but the outcome is one and the same, you ended up with just blunt numbers, not with their verbal equivalents.

For Ress Russian is not quite a native language, that’s why he both failed to understand what you meant by asking to “write the numbers in this paragraph, as I can’t clearly hear the endings…” The reason is, he, just as an absolute majority of the former soviet republics inhabitants, just does NOT know how to correctly change the numerals in various declentions; but the reason is, he doesn’t have to, as he is a system administrator, not a linguist! =))) The correct answer is a fairly logical declention form of an ordinal numeral,

it goes like, “… из золота семьсот шестидесятой пробы…”, or if it were the ordinal 762, it’d be “…семьсот шестьдесят второй пробы”; notice how only the last element of a complex ordinal numeral undergoes declention change, the initial form being “… семьсот шестьдесят два”.

Notice, however, this declention paradigm holds true ONLY for the ORDINAL numerals ! =)))) With CARDINAL numerals it works in a different way, e.g., if we need to say, “… He is happy with 762 golden items” we’ll end up with a rather comlicated declention paradigm, namely, “Он доволен семьюстами шестьюдесятью двумя золотыми изделиями”, the initial form in the nominative case being “семьсот шестьдесят два”…

The reason why Yevgeny, a professional school teacher of the Russian language failed to provide you with the requested form of the numerals is different, but it still has a basis for being justified, in that strangely enough but the declention of complex numerals in Russian is stunningly complicated, to the point that I’d even put off their acquisition process for a much more advanced stage of learning the language, definitely not for the beginner’s stage! For Yevgeny, it’s much more important that you start speaking, even with some mistakes, as it does NOT affect being understood THAT much! =))) That’s why Yevgeny says endings are dropped by the natives; well, they are NOT, but at the beginner’s stage they don’t matter THAT much! =))

For you to write grammatically corectly in Russian, you WILL surely need to know all these endings, but in a casual everyday speech nobody would ever find fault with you, being a foreigner, to use the declention endings incorrectly! =)))

Hopefully, it helps, at least a bit, as I’d like to re-iterate, the numerals declention is one of the most complicated issues even for the native Russian speakers as you have already seen here! :wink:

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@pauler так уверенно развешивает какие-то ярлыки, что даже читать до конца его опус желания нет. Но поржал от умозаключений, сделанных во втором абзаце :slight_smile:

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I found this video helpful.

Thanks! That’s a very good video.

Whatever! :wink: I don’t care a … bit! :wink: I have absouletely NO doubt you will NOT be able to provide grammatically correct declention of any complex numerals, both ordinal and cardinal ! :wink: Especially in the most complicated, instrumental case! =)))