Question 1

Why use просидели here instead of the imperfective сидели?

Accepted Answer

The prefix про- combined with a time expression emphasizes spending that exact duration doing the action. While сидели час just states the factual background that we were sitting for an hour, the perfective просидели час treats that entire hour of sitting as a single, completed, and sometimes exhausting or notable event.

Question 2

How can просидели be perfective if sitting for an hour is a continuous, drawn-out action?

Accepted Answer

This is exactly what the про- prefix does here! It creates a special type of perfective verb that takes a continuous action and wraps it in a strict time boundary. By explicitly stating the duration (час), the entire block of time is viewed as one finished result rather than an ongoing process.

Question 3

Why doesn't the time expression час need a preposition like за or на?

Accepted Answer

When expressing the exact duration spent on a continuous action, Russian uses the plain accusative case with no preposition. Because час is an inanimate masculine noun, its accusative form looks exactly like the nominative. The core structure for this lesson is simply a про- verb followed by the bare accusative of time.

Question 4

Why is it зоне ожидания rather than an adjective and a noun?

Accepted Answer

Russian frequently links nouns using the genitive case where English might use a compound noun or an adjective. зоне ожидания literally translates to 'zone of waiting.' Here, зоне is in the prepositional case because of the location preposition в, and ожидания is the genitive form of the noun ожидание (waiting or expectation).

Мы просидели в зоне ожидания час.

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