Из-за дождя нам пришлось отменить пикник в парке.

Because of the rain, we had to cancel the picnic in the park.

Breakdown of Из-за дождя нам пришлось отменить пикник в парке.

• парк: the park
• в: in
• мы: we
• дождь: the rain

Questions & Answers about Из-за дождя нам пришлось отменить пикник в парке.

What does из-за mean here?

Из-за means because of or due to.

So:

Из-за дождя = because of the rain

A very common thing for learners to notice is that из-за is written with a hyphen. It is a fixed preposition, so you should learn it as one unit.

It often introduces a cause, especially when the cause is something inconvenient, negative, or unwanted:

• из-за дождя = because of the rain
• из-за пробок = because of traffic jams
• из-за ошибки = because of a mistake

Why is it дождя, not дождь?

Because из-за requires the genitive case.

The dictionary form is дождь = rain, but after из-за it changes to the genitive:

• nominative: дождь
• genitive: дождя

So:

• из-за дождя = because of the rain

This is very common in Russian: prepositions often force a specific case.

Why is it нам пришлось, not мы пришлось?