Breakdown of Они будут гостить у нас две недели.
мы
we
они
they
у
at, by
две
two (f)
неделя
week
быть
to be
гостить
to stay as a guest
Questions & Answers about Они будут гостить у нас две недели.
Does у нас mean "with us" here?
It translates to "with us," but conceptually it means "at our place." You might remember у нас from phrases like у нас есть (we have). When paired with verbs about living, staying, or visiting, у followed by the genitive case means staying at that person's home.
How does the verb гостить work?
It comes directly from the noun гость (guest) and means "to stay as a guest." It is very common to use this specific verb in Russian instead of generic words for "stay" or "visit" when someone is staying overnight at your house.
Why use the two-word future tense будут гостить instead of a single-word perfective verb?
Because the sentence focuses on an ongoing process that lasts for a specific duration (two weeks). To express continuous actions in the future, we use the imperfective future tense: the future form of "to be" (будут) plus the imperfective infinitive (гостить).
Why is there no Russian word for "for" in the phrase "for two weeks"?
In Russian, you do not need a preposition to show the duration of an action. You simply state the time period directly, which is why "for two weeks" is translated just as две недели.
Why is the word for week written as недели instead of неделя?
After the numbers two, three, and four, Russian nouns take the genitive singular form. The dictionary form is неделя, and its genitive singular is недели. We also use the feminine version of the number two (две instead of два) because неделя is a feminine noun.
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