Breakdown of Около трёхсот пассажиров пробыли в терминале весь день.
день
day
в
in / to (direction)
пассажир
passenger
весь
all, the whole, everything, everyone (весь, вся, всё, все)
триста
three hundred
около
approximately, about
пробыть
to stay (for a specified time)
терминал
the terminal
Questions & Answers about Около трёхсот пассажиров пробыли в терминале весь день.
Why is the perfective verb пробыли used here instead of the imperfective были, since 'all day' is a long continuous duration?
The prefix про- adds a specific meaning (Aktionsart or 'action type') of spending a defined, exact span of time doing something. When paired with a time duration like весь день, Russian often uses this perfective form to package that entire block of time as a single, completed result.
Why does the sentence use трёхсот instead of the nominative триста?
The preposition около (meaning 'about' or 'approximately') requires the Genitive case. Declining hundreds in Russian can be tricky because both halves decline: три becomes трёх and ста becomes сот, giving us the Genitive form трёхсот.
Since the subject около трёхсот пассажиров is in the Genitive case, why is the verb пробыли in the plural?
With quantifier subjects like numbers or words like около, the verb can be neuter singular (пробыло) or plural (пробыли). The plural is strongly preferred here because the passengers are animate, living people, and the sentence focuses on their active experience rather than just a passive mathematical total.
What case is весь день and why isn't there a preposition for 'all day'?
It is in the Accusative case. Russian uses the bare Accusative without a preposition to express the exact duration of an action (answering 'how long?'). This Accusative of time perfectly matches the perfective duration prefix про- on the verb.
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