The second-most common word for “to” in Russian is “на” followed by the accusative case. This is potentially confusing because “на” followed by the prepositional case often means “at.” Observe the contrast:

“На” followed by accusative can also be translated as “onto”:

The most common word for “to” in Russian is “в” followed by the accusative case. This is tricky for Gringos because “в” followed by prepositional means “at.” Observe the contrast:

“В” can also indicate motion and be translated as “into”:

Although the most common word for “at” in Russian is «в» followed by the prepositional case, there is a set of very common nouns that use «на» followed by the prepositional case. Among the most common phrases are:

Learning the на words is not all that difficult: by my count there are fewer than a hundred. You can take a look at my most recent list here.

На can also be translated as “on”:

The most common word for “at” in Russian is в followed by the prepositional case:

But в can often be translated as “in”:

If you are an English speaker, your intuition will be a good guide as to when to translate в as in and when as at. Pity the poor Russian speaker, though, who has to figure out the difference in English.

В can also be used to indicate emotional states:

The word долго means “for a long time,” but it's not the same as давно. Now here is a subtle bit. If an activity has been going on for a long time, but you don't really think of it in terms of starting “a long time ago,” then you use долго instead of давно:

Some people will sloppily translate a sentence like «Мы долго ехали из Москвы во Владивосток» word for word as “We were riding from Moscow to Vladivostok for a long time,” but it's better to paraphrase the sentence thus: “It took a long time to go from Moscow to Vladivostok.” Other examples:

It's possible to find долго and давно in similar-looking past tense sentences, but their meanings are quite distinct: