Thread: "Мой друг тоже приезжает из Петербурга. "

I have two questions about this sentence... :fool"

1) Приезжает: Is it fair to say that it means "My friend will also be ARRIVING / TRAVELLING from St Petersburg.... (the translation was something else, but I think it was wrong...)

2) Why is there an "a" at the end.. "ПетербургА"? I noticed the same thing in another sentence: "Как мне доехать до Санкт-Петербурга?"

1) Yes
2) до чего? – до Санкт-Петербурга. Родительный падеж.

Ok! Thanks!

It's just the changing ending on NAMES or place names that is so hard to get right... I knew that really... just tired and unfocused...


But actually: I thought "St Petersburg" was excluded from changing the endings, since it's a non-Russian name, really, right? I thought that for the reason that you don't say:

Её нет в Санкт-Петербург[s:2r9jooo9]е[/s:2r9jooo9]"
but on the other hand, you'd say:
Её нет в Москве.

But seriously I shouldn't try to understand Russian grammar when I am tired....

Foreign words that have the same form as Russian words change normally. For example, I'm from Ottawa, and speaking Russian that city would have all the normal endings of any Russian name ending in -a. The same for Vancouver, New York, London, etc. - they are all masculine in Russian.

But cities with endings that don't fit into the Russian case system would not change in the cases - for example Toronto, Sydney etc. So you would just say "do Toronto" "v Sydney" but "iz Ottavi" or "v Londone"

Originally Posted by John_Douglas

Foreign words that have the same form as Russian words change normally. For example, I'm from Ottawa, and speaking Russian that city would have all the normal endings of any Russian name ending in -a. The same for Vancouver, New York, London, etc. - they are all masculine in Russian.

But cities with endings that don't fit into the Russian case system would not change in the cases - for example Toronto, Sydney etc. So you would just say "do Toronto" "v Sydney" but "iz Ottavi" or "v Londone"

Сидней is also declinable. Из Сиднея (Genitive), в Сиднее (location, Prepositional), в Сидней (diretion, Accusative)...

As well as сарай (barn).