Breakdown of Вот бы исчезнуть через час и пить коктейль на пляже.
и
and
пить
to drink
на
on, at / by (transport) / to (a place) / to (in answer to)
час
hour
бы
would (conditional particle) / concessive particle
через
in (after a period of time)
пляж
the beach
вот бы
if only (in 'вот бы')
исчезнуть
to disappear
коктейль
cocktail
Questions & Answers about Вот бы исчезнуть через час и пить коктейль на пляже.
Why are we using the infinitives исчезнуть and пить after вот бы instead of the past tense?
When expressing a personal wish about what you want to do, you can use вот бы followed by an infinitive. Using the past tense (like Вот бы я исчез...) is also perfectly correct and means the same thing, but the infinitive drops the subject and makes the wish sound more abstract and dreamy, like 'Oh, to disappear...'
Why do we use the perfective verb исчезнуть but the imperfective verb пить in the same sentence?
The aspects match how you envision the actions. You want to disappear just once, as a single completed event, so you use the perfective исчезнуть. But once you reach the beach, you want drinking the cocktail to be a continuous, relaxing process, which requires the imperfective пить.
For 'in an hour', why do we use через час instead of в час?
You use через plus the accusative case when you mean 'after a lapse of time' or 'in an amount of time from now'. So, через час means 'in one hour's time.' If you said в час, it would mean 'at one o'clock.'
Is коктейль in the accusative case here?
Yes, it is the direct object of the verb пить, so it takes the accusative case. Because коктейль is a masculine inanimate noun, its accusative form looks exactly the same as its nominative dictionary form.
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