Вечером мы собрались дома.

In the evening we got together at home.

Breakdown of Вечером мы собрались дома.

• дома: at home
• мы: we
• вечером: in the evening
• собраться: to gather

Questions & Answers about Вечером мы собрались дома.

What is вечером grammatically, and why isn’t there a preposition like в (“in”) before it?

Вечером is the instrumental singular form of the noun вечер (“evening”).

In this sentence it functions as an adverbial expression of time, meaning “in the evening”.

Russian very often uses the instrumental case without a preposition to express “when?” with parts of the day and some time words:

• утром – in the morning (from утро)
• днём – in the daytime (from день)
• вечером – in the evening (from вечер)
• ночью – at night (from ночь)

So instead of saying в вечер (“in evening”), Russian just uses вечером. В вечер is not natural in modern standard Russian (it might appear only in poetry or very unusual style).

How would you say “in the evenings / every evening” instead of just “in the evening”?

To express repeated / habitual evenings, Russian normally changes the expression:

1. по вечерам – “in the evenings”, “on evenings (habitually)”

   • По вечерам мы собирались дома. – In the evenings we used to get together at home.

2. каждый вечер – “every evening”

   • Каждый вечер мы собирались дома. – Every evening we got together at home.

Plain вечером usually refers to one particular evening (or is understood as “that evening” from context), not to a habit by itself.

What exactly is the verb form собрались (infinitive, tense, aspect, person)?

The infinitive is собраться.

Собрались is:

• tense: past
• aspect: perfective (completed action)
• person / number: 1st or 3rd person plural (“we gathered” / “they gathered”)
• voice: reflexive (because of the -сь at the end)

So Вечером мы собрались дома = “In the evening we gathered / got together at home” (a completed event).

For comparison, the imperfective infinitive is собираться (“to be gathering”, “to get ready”, “to plan to”).

What does the ending -сь in собрались do? Could you say мы собрали instead?

The -сь is the reflexive ending (a shortened form of -ся). It attaches after the tense/person ending:

• собрались = собра-л-и-сь (root + past suffix + plural + reflexive)

Here it changes the meaning of the verb from “gather something” to “gather (ourselves) / get together”:

• собрать – to collect, to gather something
  
  • Мы собрали вещи. – We gathered/packed our things.
• собраться – to gather together, assemble; also “to get ready”
  
  • Мы собрались. – We got together.

So мы собрали would be wrong in this sentence; it would mean “we collected (something)”, not “we got together”. The -сь is essential here.

What’s the difference between мы собрались дома and мы собирались дома?

The difference is in aspect (perfective vs imperfective) and therefore in meaning:

1. Мы собрались дома. (perfective собраться)

   • A completed, single action:
   • We (finally) got together at home.
   • It presents the gathering as a finished event that actually happened.

2. Мы собирались дома. (imperfective собираться) – several possible readings:

   • Habitual / repeated in the past:
     
     • We used to get together at home.
   • Process in the past:
     
     • We were getting together at home (at that moment).
   • Or with the other meaning of собираться = “to be about to / to intend to”:
     
     • Мы собирались дома, но потом передумали. – We were planning to meet at home, but then we changed our minds.

So собрались = the meeting actually took place and is seen as completed;
собирались can describe a habit, a process, or even just a plan / intention.

Why is it дома and not в доме or just дом?

Here дома is an adverb meaning “at home”.

• Мы собрались дома. – We got together at home.

Compare:

1. дома (adverb) – “at home”

   • Я вечером дома. – I’m at home in the evening.
   • No preposition is used.

2. в доме (preposition + noun in prepositional) – “in the house / inside a house”

   • Мы собрались в доме. – We gathered in a/the house (inside some building, not necessarily our home).

3. Bare дом (“house, home” as a noun) needs a case/preposition;

   • Мы собрались дом is ungrammatical. You must say either дома, в доме, у дома, etc.

So дома focuses on the idea of one’s home as a place where people live, while в доме is more neutral literally “inside the building”.

What’s the difference between дома and домой?

They express place vs direction:

• дома – “at home” (location, static)

  • Use with verbs of state: быть, сидеть, оставаться, жить…
  • Я дома. – I am at home.
  • Мы собрались дома. – We got together at home.

• домой – “(to) home” (direction, movement towards home)

  • Use with verbs of motion: идти, ехать, прийти, пойти, вернуться…
  • Я иду домой. – I’m going home.
  • Мы поехали домой вечером. – We went home in the evening.

So in Вечером мы собрались дома, дома must be the “at home” form, not домой.

Can the word order change, for example to Мы вечером собрались дома or Мы собрались дома вечером?

Yes. Russian word order is quite flexible, and all of these are grammatically correct:

• Вечером мы собрались дома.
• Мы вечером собрались дома.
• Мы собрались вечером дома.
• Дома мы собрались вечером.

The differences are mostly in emphasis / information structure, not in basic meaning:

• Putting Вечером first makes the time more prominent (“As for the evening, we got together at home”).
• Putting дома earlier can slightly highlight the place:
  
  • Дома мы вечером собрались. – “It was at home that we got together in the evening” (contrast with other possible places).

For a neutral sentence, Вечером мы собрались дома or Мы вечером собрались дома are both very natural.

Could дома here mean “houses” (plural), not “at home”?

Formally, дома can be:

1. Nominative plural of дом – “houses”

   • Новые дома стоят на холме. – New houses stand on the hill.

2. Genitive singular of дом – “of the house” (stress difference, but spelling is the same).

3. An adverb – “at home”

   • Я дома. – I’m at home.

In Вечером мы собрались дома, it clearly works as the adverb “at home” because:

• The subject is already мы (“we”), so дома is not acting as a subject (“houses”).
• The meaning of собраться with мы expects a place where people gather; “we gathered at home” fits perfectly.

If дома meant “houses” here, the sentence would not make sense: “In the evening, we gathered houses” or “In the evening, houses gathered at home” are both wrong. Context and grammar make the “at home” reading the only natural one.

How would you say “In the evening we met at my place / at his place” in Russian, and what structure is used?

You would typically say:

• Вечером мы собрались у меня дома. – In the evening we got together at my place.
• Вечером мы собрались у него дома. – In the evening we got together at his place.
• …у неё дома – at her place
• …у них дома – at their place

The structure is:

• у + [pronoun in genitive] + дома

where:

• у ≈ “at (someone’s place)”
• Genitive pronouns: меня, тебя, него, неё, нас, вас, них

So:

• у меня дома – at my home / at my place
• у тебя дома – at your place
• у нас дома – at our place

In your original sentence, дома alone just means “at home” (implicitly “our home”). Adding у меня / у него specifies whose home it is.