Breakdown of Мы выбрали тариф на час, но до тех пор, пока не закончился дождь, сидели в кафе.
Questions & Answers about Мы выбрали тариф на час, но до тех пор, пока не закончился дождь, сидели в кафе.
Выбрали is perfective and presents the action as a completed, one-time result: they made the choice and it was done.
Выбирали (imperfective) would emphasize the process (they were choosing / were in the middle of choosing) or repeated choosing, which doesn’t fit as well when the sentence moves on to what happened afterward.
Сидели (imperfective) describes an ongoing state/activity over a stretch of time: they were sitting in the café while waiting.
Посидели (perfective with по-) usually means sat for a while as a bounded, completed event. You could say …пока не закончился дождь, посидели в кафе if you want to frame the café time as a finished “we sat there for a bit” episode, but сидели is the neutral “were sitting” background action.
На + accusative is commonly used to express a duration or a “rate/plan for X time”:
- тариф на час = a tariff/rate plan valid for an hour / per hour (context decides).
Here час is accusative singular (same form as nominative for masculine inanimate nouns).
Yes, both are possible, with slightly different focus:
- тариф на один час makes the “exactly one hour” idea more explicit.
- почасовой тариф means an hourly rate in general (charged by the hour), not necessarily a specific one-hour package.
- тариф на час is very natural for “we chose the one-hour option/rate.”
Пока alone can mean while / until depending on context.
До тех пор, пока… is a stronger, clearer “until” structure: up to the time when… It often sounds more explicit and deliberate, especially in narration:
- …сидели в кафе, пока не закончился дождь = We sat in the café until the rain stopped. (fine)
- …сидели в кафе до тех пор, пока не закончился дождь = Emphasizes “right up until the rain stopped.”
In Russian, пока не + perfective past is a standard way to express until something happens:
- пока не закончился literally looks negative, but idiomatically it means until it ended.
This is very common: - Подожди, пока не придёт автобус = Wait until the bus arrives.
Because the “stopping/ending” is a single completed change of state: the rain went from “ongoing” to “finished.” Russian typically uses a perfective verb in an “until” clause to mark the boundary event:
- пока не закончился дождь = until the rain finished (stopped).
Yes, word order is quite flexible, but it changes emphasis:
- Мы выбрали тариф на час, но сидели в кафе до тех пор, пока не закончился дождь. (more straightforward: “but we sat… until…”)
- Original version puts the “until…” part before сидели в кафе, which can sound a bit more literary and highlights the time frame earlier. Both are grammatical.
- The comma before но separates two coordinated parts of a compound sentence:
Мы выбрали…, но … сидели… - Inside the second part, пока не закончился дождь is a subordinate clause, so it’s set off by commas.
Also, до тех пор, пока… is a paired conjunction-like structure; the boundary between the main clause and the subordinate clause is marked with a comma.
Here it’s location, so it’s в + prepositional:
- сидели где? → в кафе = (we) were sitting in a café.
If it were motion, you’d typically use в + accusative: - пошли куда? → в кафе (accusative looks the same as prepositional for кафе, since it’s indeclinable, but the grammar role differs).