Russian - Time before an event (за ... до)

To state that something happens a certain amount of time before an event, Russian uses the construction за ... до.

before (in 'за ... до ...')

The phrase requires two cases:

I always arrive half an hour before the departure.

Since the amount of time is in the Accusative case, masculine inanimate nouns like день (day) or час (hour) match their dictionary forms.

He warned us a day before the departure.

I woke up an hour before the meeting.

Feminine nouns like минута (minute) or неделя (week) take standard Accusative endings (-а to -у, -я to -ю).

It is necessary to warn the clients a week before the premiere.

The teacher started the lesson a minute before the bell.

To express an approximate amount of time, swap the order of the number and the noun, placing the time noun before за.

For example, за два часа means "two hours before," but часа за два means "about two hours before."

We arrived about two hours before the flight departure.

I managed to order a pizza ten minutes before closing.

The system sent a reminder two hours before the meeting.

We bought the tickets a week before the trip.

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