Breakdown of Мы остановились в гостинице на три дня.
день
day
мы
we
в
in / to (direction)
три
three
гостиница
hotel
на
for (a period of time)
остановиться
to stay (at a hotel)
Questions & Answers about Мы остановились в гостинице на три дня.
Why do we need the preposition на here? Couldn't we just say три дня to mean 'for three days'?
You need на because the verb остановились is perfective and describes a one-time completed action (checking in/stopping). When an action has a result, you use на + Accusative to show the intended duration of that result. If you used an imperfective verb to describe the continuous process of living there, you would drop the на and just say: Мы жили в гостинице три дня.
Since 'stayed' describes spending time, why use the perfective verb остановились instead of an imperfective one?
English treats 'staying at a hotel' as a continuous action, but Russian approaches it differently. The verb остановиться literally means 'to stop' or 'to come to a halt'. When traveling, it is the natural way to say you stopped your journey and set up a base somewhere. Because it focuses on the completed action of checking in or arriving, it is perfective.
What case is три дня in after the preposition на? It looks like the standard dictionary form.
It is in the Accusative case, which is required by на when talking about intended duration. It looks like the dictionary (Nominative) form because for inanimate nouns and numbers, the Accusative form is identical to the Nominative form.
As a quick refresher, why is the word for 'days' here дня and not the plural дни or дней?
This is the classic Russian number rule: after the numbers 2, 3, and 4 (when they are in the Nominative or inanimate Accusative case), the following noun must be in the Genitive singular. The Genitive singular of день is дня. If you stayed for 5 days, it would switch to the Genitive plural: на пять дней.
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