Dialogue: Small Talk About the Weekend

Monday morning, two colleagues or friends run into each other and do the smallest of small talk: "How was your weekend?" It looks trivial, but those three short turns pack a perfective verb of time passing, a multidirectional motion verb that quietly says "we went and came back", and two pieces of pure spoken shorthand that no textbook sentence ever teaches. Meeting them inside one real exchange — instead of as three separate rules — is exactly what makes them stick. Read the whole dialogue first, then the line-by-line commentary.

The dialogue

Line by line

— Приве́т! Как прошли́ выходны́е?

Приве́т is the casual "hi" — it signals ты territory from the first word (the formal opener would be Здра́вствуйте). It immediately frames the whole exchange as relaxed and between equals.

The verb прошли́ is the perfective past of пройти́ ("to pass, go by") — here in its time sense: a stretch of time passing. Russian doesn't ask "how was your weekend" with a verb "to be"; it asks how the weekend went / passed. Two things are doing real work here:

• Perfective aspect. The weekend is over — a closed, completed block of time. That wrap-up, viewed as a single finished whole, is exactly what the perfective signals. An imperfective проходи́ли would suggest an ongoing or repeated passing, which is wrong for a single finished weekend. See imperfective vs perfective.
• Plural agreement. выходны́е ("the weekend", literally "the days-off") is grammatically plural — it's a substantivized adjective meaning "the days off", so the verb is plural прошли́, not singular прошло́.

— Отли́чно! Ходи́ли в го́ры. А ты?

Отли́чно ("excellent / great") is a one-word answer — natural spoken Russian loves to drop everything but the essential word.

Ходи́ли is the heart of this line, and it carries a meaning English can't pack into one word. It's the past of ходи́ть, the multidirectional (indeterminate) member of the ходи́ть / идти́ motion pair. In the past tense, a multidirectional verb of motion means a completed round trip — you went and came back:

• Ходи́ли в го́ры = "we went up to the mountains (and returned)". The whole excursion, there-and-back, is bundled into ходи́ли.
• If the speaker said шли в го́ры (unidirectional идти́ in the past), it would mean "we were walking toward the mountains" — a one-way journey in progress, not a finished trip. That's not what you say about a weekend outing you're now reporting on.
• The subject is dropped: ходи́ли with no pronoun is understood as "we" from context (мы). Russian routinely omits subject pronouns in casual speech when the verb ending and context make the person clear.

Note also в го́ры — direction "into / up to" the mountains takes в + accusative (го́ры here is accusative plural, same as nominative for this inanimate noun). The matching "in the mountains" (location) would be в гора́х (prepositional).

А ты? bounces the question straight back: "And you?" — the bare nominative ты is enough, since the verb (прошли́ выходны́е) is understood.

— Да так, до́ма сиде́л. Отдыха́л.

This line is a little masterclass in spoken texture.

Да так is an idiomatic brush-off — "eh, nothing special / so-so / nothing much". Word for word it's "yes so", but it functions as a soft, modest non-answer: my weekend was unremarkable and I'd rather not make a thing of it. It's warm, not rude — exactly the register friends use. The да here is not "yes"; it's a discourse particle softening the whole reply (see да, нет, ну as discourse markers).

До́ма сиде́л literally means "I sat at home", but сиде́ть до́ма is a fixed idiom meaning "to stay home / be stuck at home / not go anywhere". It doesn't imply literal sitting — you could have been cooking, gaming, lying around. The point is: I didn't go out. Two grammar notes:

• До́ма is an adverb ("at home"), not a case form of дом — you never say в до́ме for "at home" in this sense. До́ма = "at home" (location); домо́й = "homewards" (direction).
• Сиде́л is masculine singular past, so we now know the speaker is male. Russian past tenses agree in gender with the subject; a female speaker would say сиде́ла. There's still no pronoun — the -л / -ла ending carries the person and gender.

Отдыха́л ("I rested / relaxed / chilled") is imperfective — and deliberately so. The speaker is describing the texture of the weekend, an ongoing background state, not a single completed event. Imperfective is the aspect of "what I was doing / how I spent the time", which is exactly the mood of weekend small talk. See aspect in the past.

— Здо́рово. Хоть вы́спался?

Здо́рово (stressed on the first syllable: ЗДО́рово) is colloquial "great / cool / nice" — distinct from the adjective здоро́во ("healthily") by stress alone. Here it's an appreciative reaction.

Хоть = "at least", a small particle adding "well, at least there's that". Вы́спался is the perfective of вы́спаться ("to get enough sleep, to sleep one's fill") — a -ся verb, perfective because it asks about a completed result: did you reach the state of being well-rested? The prefix вы́- here means "to do thoroughly / to one's fill", and it's always stressed (вы́- pulls the stress onto itself in perfectives).

— Не то сло́во! Спал до обе́да.

Не то сло́во! is a wonderful idiom — literally "not that word!", meaning "and how! / you bet! / that's putting it mildly!". It's an emphatic agreement: yes, and even more so than you said.

Спал до обе́да = "I slept till noon/lunchtime". Спал is imperfective (the ongoing process of sleeping), and до обе́да is до + genitive ("until lunch"; обе́д → обе́да). The imperfective fits because we're describing the duration of sleeping, not a single completed wake-up. (The perfective проспа́л would shift the meaning to "I overslept / slept through something".)

Why ты all the way through

Every signal in this dialogue says ты: the opener Приве́т, the bare А ты?, the dropped subject pronouns, the idioms Да так and Не то сло́во. Small talk about the weekend is by definition between people who already know each other — colleagues on friendly terms, friends, classmates — so the casual ты register is correct. The same content in a formal вы setting would lose the idioms and tighten up: you'd hear Как прошли́ ва́ши выходны́е? and a fuller, less elliptical answer. The grammar of intimacy here is precisely the ellipsis (dropping pronouns and verbs) and the idiomatic fillers — they're how Russians signal "we're relaxed and close".

Vocabulary gloss

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Как прошли́ выходны́е? — ask how finished time went with perfective пройти́, agreeing with the time word (прошли́ for plural выходны́е, прошёл день, прошла́ неде́ля).
• Ходи́ли = a completed round trip (multidirectional past). For "we went somewhere and came back", this is the default — not шли.
• Casual speech drops subject pronouns (ходи́ли, сиде́л) and leans on idioms: Да так ("nothing much"), сиде́ть до́ма ("stay home"), Не то сло́во ("and how!").
• Aspect tracks intent: imperfective сиде́л / отдыха́л / спал for background states and duration; perfective прошли́ / вы́спался for closed wholes and results.
• The whole register is ты: Приве́т, А ты?, ellipsis, and idioms together signal closeness — that informality is the grammar of friendly small talk.