Breakdown of Вчера мы смотрели интервью с Квентином Тарантино.
мы
we
смотреть
to watch / to look at / make sure (in a warning)
вчера
yesterday
с
with (also со)
интервью
interview
Квентин
Quentin
Тарантино
Tarantino
Questions & Answers about Вчера мы смотрели интервью с Квентином Тарантино.
Why does Квентином have an instrumental ending, but Тарантино doesn't change?
Foreign first names that end in a hard consonant decline just like standard Russian masculine nouns, which is why Quentin gets the instrumental ending -ом after the preposition с. However, foreign surnames ending in -о are indeclinable in Russian. Because of this rule, Тарантино stays exactly the same in all grammatical cases.
Is интервью in the accusative case here since it is the direct object?
Yes, it is grammatically in the accusative case, but you can't see a spelling change. Интервью is a borrowed foreign noun ending in a vowel, making it indeclinable. It never changes its form regardless of its role in the sentence.
Why use the imperfective смотрели instead of the perfective посмотрели here?
Both are grammatically correct, but смотрели is very common when simply naming an activity you spent time doing yesterday, without focusing on the completion or result of the action. If you wanted to emphasize that you watched the entire interview from start to finish, you would use посмотрели.
If Тарантино doesn't change, how do Russian speakers know what case it's in?
The context makes it clear. The preposition с forces the instrumental case. Because the first name Квентином clearly takes the instrumental ending, it is obvious that the entire name phrase is in the instrumental case, even though the surname's spelling remains frozen.
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