Breakdown of Мы идём в кино или в театр.
мы
we
театр
theater
в
in / to (direction)
идти
to go (on foot) / to proceed, go (of a process)
кино
cinema
или
or
Questions & Answers about Мы идём в кино или в театр.
Why do we use идём here instead of another word for 'going'?
идём (from идти) means we are making a single, specific trip right now. While it technically means going on foot, Russians commonly use it for attending local events or venues like a cinema or theatre, even if you might actually take a bus or taxi to get there.
Why are кино and театр in the accusative case instead of the prepositional case?
Because we are talking about direction (going to a place), not location (being already at a place). When the preposition в is used to show a destination you are moving towards, the noun that follows must take the accusative case.
Since we are using the accusative case, why doesn't the ending of кино change?
кино is a borrowed foreign word. In Russian, many borrowed nouns ending in -о or -и (like метро, такси, кино) are indeclinable. This means they never change their endings, no matter what grammatical case they are in.
Why is the preposition в repeated before both destinations?
In Russian, when you have a list of places connected by conjunctions like или (or) or и (and), you almost always repeat the preposition before each noun. It sounds much more natural to say в кино или в театр than to just say в once.
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