Breakdown of Война шла с тысяча девятьсот четырнадцатого до тысяча девятьсот восемнадцатого года.
идти
to go (on foot) / to proceed, go (of a process)
год
year
тысяча
thousand
четырнадцатый
fourteenth
восемнадцатый
eighteenth
до
before, until
девятьсот
nine hundred
с
from (a starting point in time)
война
war
Questions & Answers about Война шла с тысяча девятьсот четырнадцатого до тысяча девятьсот восемнадцатого года.
Why are the numbers in the Genitive case here?
To express "from one year to another year," Russian uses the prepositions с (from) and до (until/to). Both of these prepositions require the Genitive case. Since years are expressed as ordinal numbers (like "the 1914th year"), we use their Genitive forms: четырнадцатого and восемнадцатого.
Why do only the last words of the years (четырнадцатого and восемнадцатого) change their endings?
When you have a compound ordinal number in Russian (a number made of multiple words where only the last part acts like an adjective, like years), only the very last word declines. The earlier parts, like тысяча девятьсот (one thousand nine hundred), always stay in their base dictionary form.
Where is the word for "year" after 1914?
It's omitted to avoid repetition. Just like we might say "from the 1914th to the 1918th year" in English, Russian drops the first года. Instead of saying с 1914 года до 1918 года, you simply wait and put года at the very end of the span.
Why does the sentence use шла (went/walked) to say the war "went on"?
The verb идти (to go) is frequently used metaphorically for events, processes, and the passage of time. When talking about a war (война), a movie, or a meeting, идти means it "lasted," "was happening," or "went on." Because война is a feminine noun, we use the feminine past tense form шла.
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