Breakdown of Вчера пришло красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу.
Questions & Answers about Вчера пришло красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу.
In Russian, the past tense of most verbs agrees in gender and number with the subject.
- пришёл – masculine singular
- пришла – feminine singular
- пришло – neuter singular
- пришли – plural (for any gender mix)
The subject of the sentence is красивое приглашение (приглашение is a neuter noun), so the verb must be neuter:
- приглашЕние пришлО – it (the invitation) came
That is why the form пришло is used, not пришёл or пришла.
Russian normally omits subject pronouns when the subject is clear from the verb form and context.
In English, you must say It came yesterday, but in Russian a simple:
- Вчера пришло красивое приглашение.
is perfectly natural. The subject is красивое приглашение, and the verb пришло already shows neuter singular, so adding оно would sound unnecessary or even clumsy here:
- Вчера оно пришло, красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу. – possible, but this would sound like you are emphasizing оно for some reason, not the neutral default.
Красивое приглашение is the subject of the sentence and stands in the nominative case (именительный падеж).
- красивое – nominative, neuter singular adjective
- приглашение – nominative, neuter singular noun
Literal structure:
Вчера (adverb) пришло (verb) красивое приглашение (subject) на эту свадьбу (prepositional phrase).
Adjectives in Russian must agree with the noun in gender, number, and case.
- приглашение is:
- neuter
- singular
- nominative in this sentence
So the adjective must also be:
- neuter, singular, nominative: красивое
If the noun had a different gender, the adjective would change:
- красивый дом (masc.) – a beautiful house
- красивая книга (fem.) – a beautiful book
- красивое приглашение (neut.) – a beautiful invitation
Yes, Russian word order is more flexible than English. All of these are grammatically correct, but they sound different in emphasis:
Вчера пришло красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу.
- Neutral, natural. Emphasis slightly on when it came (yesterday) and the fact that it appeared.
Красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу пришло вчера.
- Emphasis on what came (the beautiful invitation) and then when.
Пришло вчера красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу.
- Emphasis on the event of it coming; starting with the verb feels a bit storytelling / “something happened yesterday…”
All are understandable; word order is used to highlight different parts of the message, not to mark grammar (since cases do that).
The preposition на is typically used for:
- events and activities: на концерт, на вечеринку, на экзамен, на свадьбу
- surfaces or directions “onto”: на стол, на балкон
A свадьба (wedding) is treated as an event, so you:
- получить приглашение на свадьбу – to receive an invitation to a wedding
- пойти на свадьбу – to go to a wedding
в свадьбу is not used in this sense, and к свадьбе would mean “towards the wedding / by the time of the wedding”, which is different.
With the meaning “to / onto” (direction), на takes the accusative case.
- Where? (no movement) → на свадьбе (prepositional)
- To where? (movement) → на свадьбу (accusative)
In our sentence, the invitation is for going to that wedding (direction towards the event), so:
на эту свадьбу – эту and свадьбу are both in the accusative singular:
- nominative: эта свадьба
- accusative: эту свадьбу
Russian often uses “come” verbs (приходить / прийти) for things that arrive, especially by mail, email, or delivery:
- Пришло письмо. – A letter came.
- Пришло сообщение. – A message came.
- Пришло приглашение. – An invitation came.
If you say:
- Вчера я получил красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу. – Yesterday I received a beautiful invitation to this wedding.
the focus is on you as the receiver.
If you say:
- Вчера пришло красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу.
the focus is on the invitation itself arriving (more impersonal). Both are natural; it’s about what you want to emphasize.
Пришло is from прийти (perfective). Приходило is from приходить (imperfective).
- пришло – a completed, one-time event: it came (and that’s it).
- приходило – process, repeated or background action: was coming / used to come.
In this context, you’re talking about a specific single invitation that arrived once, so perfective is natural:
- Вчера пришло красивое приглашение… – it (finally) came yesterday.
If you said:
- Иногда приходило приглашение на свадьбу от дальних родственников.
– From time to time, an invitation to a wedding would arrive from distant relatives.
there you’d use приходило because it is about repeated events.
Yes. Приглашение is a deverbal noun formed from the verb пригласить (“to invite”).
The pattern is:
- пригласить (to invite) → приглашение (an invitation)
The suffix -ение is common for making nouns from verbs:
- решить (to decide) → решение (a decision / solution)
- объяснить (to explain) → объяснение (an explanation)
- пригласить (to invite) → приглашение (an invitation)
It’s a neuter noun ending in -ие, so:
- nominative singular: приглашение
- genitive singular: приглашения, etc.
Russian does not have separate words for a/an or the. The distinction is usually clear from context or from what is already known in the conversation.
- Вчера пришло красивое приглашение на эту свадьбу.
– Yesterday a beautiful invitation to this wedding came.
(Most natural translation if this is the first time it’s mentioned.)
If both speaker and listener already know about a particular invitation (e.g., you were waiting for it), in English you’d probably say the invitation, but Russian still just says красивое приглашение – context supplies the “the” idea.
So красивое приглашение can be translated as either a beautiful invitation or the beautiful invitation, depending on the situation.