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How are these sentences any different, in principle, and would it be a big mistake to use them interchangeably in conversational language?

I stayed there for half an hour - Я там остановился на полчаса

I stayed with them for a week - Я остановился у них на неделю

I'll stay at a hotel for a few days. - Я останусь в оте́ле па́ру дней / не́сколько дне́й.

Мы остановились в роско́шном оте́ле.

Я не хочу́ останавливаться в дорого́м оте́ле на пару́ дней.

Avtokod
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    can you please provide some evidence of what you've tried before to find out the answer? While google translator indeed translate both as "stay", the alternative translations (come to a stop, come to a halt) give pretty clear idea of what's the difference. – shabunc Oct 11 '16 at 20:29
  • Well, this is not a translation service, this is a place where people interested in learning Russian are asking question they've failed to figure out to find answer themselves (or just want to check some theory they already have). While you questions are definitely not non-topic be warned - without putting some investigational effort to the question you'll most likely will get downvoted - this is based on observations. – shabunc Oct 11 '16 at 20:38
  • oh gosh I'm living in US for a quite a while and make a loooot of mistakes, that's true. Штефан, nobody mocks here about any mistakes. Also, please don't take this conversation as if you are not welcome here. On the contrary, it's nice to have someone who's that interested. Also, the majority of you questions are (as to me) quite valuable and interesting. I've just mentioned that sometimes questions can be downvoted if it seems like the author hadn't tried hard enough to find an answer by himself. But it's completely ok to ignore any comments of this kind. – shabunc Oct 11 '16 at 21:01
  • What is "оте́лье"? – Anixx Oct 12 '16 at 09:00

2 Answers2

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Your Russian translation for I'll stay at a hotel for a few days. is not correct. You should use the same word root - остановлюсь. Word остаться means remain:

Я останусь в этом городе навсегда.
I'll remain in this city forever

It's worth adding that остановиться (in the meaning you imply) has the connotation of a temporary action to it while word остаться often has the connotation of staying/remaining for a longer period than остановиться, although this isn't necessarily the case.

Aleks G
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    @Штефан There's no simple rule. You can use остановиться even for a year-long stay if you want to emphasise that this is temporary. Word остаться is usually used with "forever" or at least a period that's longer than would otherwise be implied or understood. – Aleks G Oct 11 '16 at 20:35
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This is a very interesting question and it's really a hard one for a foreign learner because the English translation of both verbs is "to stay" in most cases.

Волкодав слегка пожалел о том, что успел миновать ворота и не остался на ночь в лесу. [Мария Семенова. Волкодав: Знамение пути )

― Вы уже или уходите, или оставайтесь». Он остался на восемь лет. [Антонина Крищенко. Императрица Клавдия (2002) // «Домовой», 2002.12.04]

Но когда через неделю он опять остался на ночь у Шуры, утром, придя на работу, еще с улицы в окне лаборатории увидел Броню. [Роман Солнцев. Полураспад. Из жизни А. А. Левушкина-Александрова, а также анекдоты о нем (2000-2002) // «Октябрь», 2002]

Впервые он остался на ночь один. Он побродил по квартире, не зная, чем заняться. [Ирина Антонова. Тринадцатый пират // «Мурзилка», 2000]

Вот туда, на дачу, когда все съехали осенью, а я еще остался на день-два сторожить вещи, приехал ко мне мой старший брат Юра: наверное, пожалел меня, что я тут один. [Г. Я. Бакланов. Жизнь, подаренная дважды (1999

These examples are from the National corpus. Остановиться for some time somewhere means to start your staying or to organize it making reservations

Я остановился в отеле.--I just came and engaged a room there.

Я остался в отеле на два дня. --I was staying at the hotel at that time and decided to prolong or continue my staying.

That is the main difference.

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