Вечером дети шумят в парке.

In the evening, children make noise in the park.

Breakdown of Вечером дети шумят в парке.

• парк: the park
• в: in
• вечером: in the evening
• ребёнок: the child

Questions & Answers about Вечером дети шумят в парке.

Why is it вечером and not в вечер?

Russian often uses the instrumental case (ending in -ом / -ем) without a preposition to express time like “in the evening / in the morning / at night”.

Common patterns:

• утром – in the morning
• днём – in the daytime
• вечером – in the evening
• ночью – at night

So вечером literally is “by evening / in the evening” and is the normal way to say “in the evening” in this general sense.

You would not normally say в вечер. If you want to be more specific, you say, for example:

• в этот вечер – this evening
• в тот вечер – that evening

But the bare в вечер on its own is practically never used.

What part of speech is вечером here? Is it an adverb?

Morphologically, вечером is a noun (вечер) in the instrumental singular.

Functionally, in the sentence it acts as an adverbial modifier of time, so in English terms you can think of it as behaving like an adverb (“in the evening”).

This is common in Russian: noun forms are often used adverbially, especially with time expressions like зимой, летом, утром, вечером, ночью.

Can I also say Дети шумят вечером в парке? Does the word order change the meaning?