Word
Летом студенты разъезжаются по своим родным городам.
Meaning
In summer, students depart to their native cities.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Летом студенты разъезжаются по своим родным городам.
студент
student (m)
город
city
летом
in summer
родной
native, own (by blood)
Questions & Answers about Летом студенты разъезжаются по своим родным городам.
How does the verb разъезжаются break down, and what does the prefix and suffix combo do?
It is built from the prefix раз- (apart/diverging) + the imperfective motion root -езжать (to ride/drive) + the reflexive suffix -ся. Together, раз- and -ся frame the verb to mean 'to scatter' or 'to depart in different directions'. The hard sign (ъ) is needed for spelling because a consonant-ending prefix meets a root starting with the soft vowel е.
Why is the imperfective aspect used here instead of the perfective?
The sentence describes a habitual, recurring action: it happens every summer (летом). For prefixed verbs of motion, imperfective verbs are formed using the multi-directional root (here, -езжать, related to ездить). If this were a one-time completed future event ('they will depart'), we would use the perfective разъедутся, built on the uni-directional root ехать.
Why do we use the preposition по with the dative case (по своим родным городам) instead of в + accusative?
You could use в свои родные города (to their native cities), but по + dative emphasizes the distributive nature of the action. It pairs perfectly with the scattering verb разъезжаются, highlighting that the students are distributing themselves 'each to their own' various locations, rather than traveling as a group to one place.
Why does the sentence use своим instead of их for 'their'?