Breakdown of Как только мама приходит с работы, дети бегут её обнимать.
Questions & Answers about Как только мама приходит с работы, дети бегут её обнимать.
Как только means “as soon as”. It expresses that one action happens immediately after another.
- Как только мама приходит с работы… = As soon as mom comes back from work…
- It emphasizes minimal time gap between the two actions.
Когда means “when” and is more neutral:
- Когда мама приходит с работы, дети бегут её обнимать. = When mom comes back from work, the children run to hug her.
Both are grammatical here, but:
- как только = stronger feeling of immediacy.
- когда = just a general time reference, no special emphasis on “immediately”.
In Russian, after conjunctions like когда, если, как только, it’s very common to use the present tense even when the meaning is future.
Как только мама приходит с работы, дети бегут её обнимать.
- Literally: As soon as mom comes (present) from work, the children run (present) to hug her.
- Meaning: Whenever / every time this happens; it can refer to a habitual situation or to a future event depending on context.
Compare:
- Когда ты придёшь, позвони мне.
Literally: When you come, call me. (Russian uses present in both verbs, but it refers to the future.)
So here приходит is present tense, but in English we might translate it as present simple (“comes”) or even future (“gets back”) depending on the style. Russian doesn’t need a future form in this subordinate time clause.
Yes, you can say:
- Как только мама придёт с работы, дети побегут её обнимать.
Two differences:
Приходит (imperfective present)
- Often describes repeated / habitual actions.
- Как только мама приходит с работы, дети бегут её обнимать.
→ Suggests this is something that happens regularly: Every time Mom comes home from work, the kids run to hug her.
Придёт (perfective future)
- Focuses on a single, specific future event.
- Как только мама придёт с работы, дети побегут её обнимать.
→ More like: As soon as Mom comes home (this time), the kids will run to hug her.
So:
- приходит → general / habitual situation.
- придёт → one-time future event (often with main verb also in a more future-looking form: побегут, побегут её обнимать).
С работы is a fixed, everyday expression meaning “from work (back home)”.
- с
- genitive (с работы) often means “from (a place)” in the sense of leaving some place/point:
- с пляжа – from the beach
- с концерта – from a concert
- с работы – from work (i.e., leaving the workplace)
- genitive (с работы) often means “from (a place)” in the sense of leaving some place/point:
Из работы is not used in this meaning; из is more “out of (the inside of)”, but we don’t normally conceptualize “work” this way.
От работы means something else: “from work” in the sense of source/cause:
- Устал от работы. – Tired from work.
- Болит спина от работы. – My back hurts from work.
So in this sentence, с работы is the natural choice: it describes going home from your workplace.
Мама is in the nominative case, because she is the subject of the verb приходит:
- мама (who?) приходит – mom comes.
If it were маму, that would be accusative, used for a direct object (like “I see mom” → я вижу маму). But here мама is not an object; she is the one doing the action (coming from work), so nominative is required.
So:
- Мама приходит с работы. – Mom comes home from work.
- Я обнимаю маму. – I am hugging mom.
This is a common Russian pattern:
verb of motion + infinitive = “go/run/come in order to do something”.
So:
- дети бегут её обнимать
= the children run to hug her (literally: the children run hug her).
Other examples:
- Иду покупать хлеб. – I’m going (on foot) to buy bread.
- Поехал отдыхать. – He went (by transport) to relax.
- Пришла поговорить. – She came to talk.
This construction emphasizes purpose: they are running with the goal of hugging her, not just running randomly.
Both orders are possible:
- дети бегут её обнимать
- дети бегут обнимать её
They are both correct and natural. The difference is mostly about rhythm and emphasis, not grammar.
- её обнимать is very common; pronouns often come before the infinitive, and this can feel a bit more “tightly connected” as a unit.
- обнимать её sounds slightly more neutral or slightly emphasizes the action обнимать first, then specifies whom.
In this sentence, дети бегут её обнимать is a smooth, natural word order, but changing to обнимать её does not change the meaning.
Её here is the accusative form of the third person singular feminine pronoun (she/her).
- Nominative: она – she
- Accusative: её – her (direct object)
- Genitive: её – her/of her
- Dative: ей – to her
- Instrumental: ею – (with) her
- Prepositional: о ней – about her
In this sentence:
- обнимать кого? – её
- She is the direct object of the verb обнимать (hug whom?).
Russian personal pronouns can have identical forms for different cases. For её, the accusative and genitive look the same (её), so you need to determine the case from the verb and the role in the sentence. Here, the verb обнимать clearly requires an accusative object.
You can say дети бегут обнимать, but the meaning changes:
- дети бегут её обнимать – the children run to hug her (specific person, here: mom).
- дети бегут обнимать – the children run to hug (someone / in general), with the object left implicit.
The version без неё would only be clear if the context already made it obvious whom they are going to hug, or if the speaker wants to be vague. In a typical sentence describing this scene, Russian speakers would normally keep её for clarity and naturalness.
Бегут is the 3rd person plural of бежать – “to run”.
Using бегут instead of идут (go/walk) adds a sense of:
- speed – they don’t just walk, they run;
- excitement / eagerness – children are happy and can’t wait to hug her.
If we said:
- Как только мама приходит с работы, дети идут её обнимать.
It would still be correct, but it would sound calmer, less emotional, more like a simple description of movement.
So бегут makes the sentence more lively and conveys the kids’ joy and impatience.
Both aspects are possible after a verb of motion, but they have different nuances.
Обнимать (imperfective):
- Focus on the process or repeated action.
- дети бегут её обнимать suggests the action itself, the act of hugging, perhaps as something that happens regularly.
Обнять (perfective):
- Focus on the result / single completion of the action “to hug once”.
- дети побегут её обнять (adding perfective побегут fits better) sounds like they will run and then give her a hug (one event).
In the original sentence, using обнимать fits well with both:
- the feeling of a warm, ongoing process of hugging, and
- the habitual situation (every time mom comes home, they (run and) hug her).
So the imperfective aspect here is natural and expressive.
Russian uses a comma to separate a subordinate clause from the main clause.
The structure is:
- Subordinate clause (condition/time):
Как только мама приходит с работы, - Main clause (result):
дети бегут её обнимать.
Any similar pattern with когда, если, как только etc. will normally require a comma between the clauses:
- Когда он приходит домой, он сразу ужинает.
- Если будет дождь, мы останемся дома.
You can also reverse the order:
- Дети бегут её обнимать, как только мама приходит с работы.
The meaning stays the same; the comma still goes between the clauses.
Yes, this word order is allowed and common:
- Дети бегут её обнимать, как только мама приходит с работы.
The meaning is the same. The difference is:
Original: Как только мама приходит с работы, дети бегут её обнимать.
→ First we set the time condition, then say what happens.Reversed: Дети бегут её обнимать, как только мама приходит с работы.
→ First we focus on what the children do, then explain when they do it.
Russian allows fairly flexible word order between main and subordinate clauses, and speakers choose the order based on what they want to emphasize first.