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The grammar references I have read including my Russian textbook say на should be followed either by the accusative or prepositional case. But when translating "for lunch" and "for supper", the usages on context.reverso.net all seem to be "на обед" and "на ужин".

Can anyone explain?

Hugh W
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  • Prepositions are often not translated literally or wrong from "content reverso", "google translate" from english to russian. Before обед or ужин на is correct. Maybe some native russian can explain this better than me. – Sarah Nov 27 '18 at 00:28

2 Answers2

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In the russian language, "завтрак", "обед" and "ужин" have the same spelling in nominative and accusative cases.
And in your examples ("на завтрак", "на обед" and "на ужин") these words are in accusative case.

Ivan Olshansky
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На обед and на ужин are accusative, not nominative.

Accusative is quite a peculiar case in Russian.

In singular, its forms have merged with nominative for most nouns except those in -а, -я and a couple more exceptions.

In plural, even the nouns which do have a distinct accusative form in singular, lose it to genitive or nominative, depending on whether the noun is animate or not.

Except for a couple of edge cases, nominative cannot be used with prepositions in Russian at all. When you are seeing something that looks like a nominative after a preposition, consult with the declension table and you'll probably find the same form used in some other case.

Quassnoi
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  • "nouns which do have a distinct accusative form lose it to genitive or accusative" could you clarify or is it a mistype? – Баян Купи-ка Nov 27 '18 at 08:00
  • @баянкупика: yeah it's a typo, thanks for noticing! – Quassnoi Nov 27 '18 at 08:06
  • can you give an example of the phenomenon you refer to in this sentence? – Баян Купи-ка Nov 27 '18 at 10:54
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    @баянкупика: есть креветку (sg. acc., distinct form), есть креветки (pl. inan. acc.= pl. nom.), есть креветок (pl. anim. acc.= pl. gen.) – Quassnoi Nov 27 '18 at 14:32
  • thank you, i believe what would make the explanation clearer is the indication that it's about distinct accusative form which exists in singular - In plural, even the nouns which *in singular* do have a distinct accusative form .... – Баян Купи-ка Nov 27 '18 at 14:52
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    @БаянКупи-ка: sure, thanks! btw feel free to edit the posts if you think that will improve them – Quassnoi Nov 27 '18 at 15:05
  • есть креветок — really? Есть креветки is the correct form and Google proves it (a screenshot of есть креветок query vs a screenshot of есть креветки query). // cc: @БаянКупи-ка – Arhadthedev Nov 27 '18 at 20:24
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    @Arhad: Rosenthal et al, 153.2: "Возможные варианты: есть креветок, устриц, пулярок – есть креветки, устрицы, пулярки". I deliberately chose this word as an example because of its varying animacy. – Quassnoi Nov 27 '18 at 21:23
  • @Arhad i appreciate your tagging me, but i over the years have learned to not be too abrupt and opinionated in my conclusions and assertions although i haven't managed to master this art to perfection yet... and on your screenshots the number of results for each phrase is almost identical so they don't really seem to help proving one way or the other, usually in frequency search for the sake of its reliability the query needs to enclosed within quotation marks so the search is performed on the entire phrase rather than on each of its individual parts – Баян Купи-ка Nov 28 '18 at 08:13