Questions & Answers about Прежде здесь был большой рынок.
Why does this sentence use прежде instead of the more common раньше?
Can I translate 'before' as до того как or прежде чем in this sentence?
No, because those are conjunctions used to connect two actions (for example, 'before I went to the store'). In this sentence, the time word stands alone to describe the whole situation, so you need an adverb like прежде or раньше.
How does Russian handle the 'there used to be' structure here?
Russian does not use dummy filler words like the English word 'there'. To express 'there was', you simply use the past tense of the verb to be (был, была, было, or были) combined with a location like здесь. The 'used to' feeling is handled entirely by the time word прежде.
Why is the verb был in the masculine form?
In English, the word 'market' comes after the phrase 'there was', but in Russian, рынок (market) is the actual grammatical subject of the sentence. Since рынок is a masculine noun, the verb must take the masculine past tense form, был.