Breakdown of Он едет домой на метро.
он
he / it (for a masculine noun) / it (for a neuter noun)
на
on, at / by (transport) / to (a place) / to (in answer to)
ехать
to go (by vehicle)
метро
subway
домой
home
Questions & Answers about Он едет домой на метро.
Why do we use едет here instead of идёт?
Both verbs mean 'is going', but they are used differently. Идёт is used when someone is moving on foot, while едет is used when someone is traveling by a vehicle. Since he is taking the subway, we must use the vehicle verb едет.
Why is the word for home домой here instead of дома?
Дома describes a fixed location, meaning someone is already 'at home'. Домой describes a direction, meaning 'to home' or 'homewards'. Because he is currently moving towards his house, we use the directional word домой.
The lesson says vehicles take the Prepositional case after на. Why doesn't метро change its ending?
You are exactly right that we normally change the ending for transport, like на автобусе (by bus). However, метро is a borrowed foreign word in Russian, and it is indeclinable. This means its spelling never changes, no matter what grammatical case is required.
How does Russian express traveling 'by' a vehicle?
Russian does not use a direct translation of the English word 'by' for transportation. Instead, you use the preposition на (which usually means 'on') followed by the vehicle in the Prepositional case. So на метро works structurally like saying 'on the subway' in English.
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