Breakdown of Гости быстро расходились по своим комнатам.
комната
room
быстро
fast, quickly
гость
guest
свой
one's own
Questions & Answers about Гости быстро расходились по своим комнатам.
Why do we use по своим комнатам (Dative) here instead of в свои комнаты (Accusative) for motion to a place?
The preposition по followed by the Dative plural is used here for a distributive meaning. It emphasizes that the guests did not all go into one single room together. Instead, the action is distributed: they separated and each went to their various respective rooms.
How does the verb расходились get the meaning of 'dispersing'?
The root comes from ходить (to walk or go). Adding the prefix рас- (which means 'apart' or 'in different directions') and the reflexive ending -ся creates расходиться. This literally translates to 'walking themselves apart,' meaning a group of people leaving a spot to go their separate ways.
Could we use их instead of своим to say 'their rooms'?
It is much better to use своим. In Russian, when 'their' refers back to the subject of the sentence (the guests), you must use the reflexive possessive pronoun свой, which here takes the Dative plural form своим. If you used их комнатам, it would sound like they were going to the rooms of some completely different group of people.
Why is the imperfective verb расходились used here rather than the perfective разошлись?
The imperfective is used to focus on the continuous, unfolding process of the guests leaving ('were dispersing'). If the sentence used the perfective разошлись, it would state a completed fact: 'The guests quickly dispersed' (meaning the action is already finished and everyone is gone).