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:

Russian-speaking Americans often confuse the words давно and долго. Today we will deal with the former. The first meaning of давно is something like “a long time ago.” In this sense it sometimes becomes давным-давно, meaning “a very long time ago”:

Давно is sometimes also translated as “for a long time” in certain senses, but there is a quirk in translating verb tenses between English and Russian with that sense. If you are talking about an activity that still goes on, and that activity began a long time ago, then in English you will often use the present perfect progressive tense, and the equivalent Russian sentence is put in the present tense and uses the phrase давно:

For some verbs you will see the present perfect (see note) instead of present perfect progressive:

If you are talking about something you have NOT done for a long time, then the English sentence is only in the present perfect, and the equivalent Russian sentence shows up in the past tense:

Note: which verbs require present perfect progressive and which verbs require present perfect in English contexts is a complex issue. Stative verbs and dynamic verbs behave differently. The difference between the two is the stuff of which doctorates are made.

Second note: American English is losing the distinction between the past tense and the present perfect. Similarly there is not always a clear distinction between present perfect and present perfect progressive. This is one of the reasons that English is so frustrating to learn. That, and when to use “the,” “a” or no article.

The word сегодня is an adverb that means today. It is quirky in that the г is actually pronounced like a в, so the word is usually pronounced something like [сиводня]. Sample sentences:

To express the idea of “this morning,” “this evening,” etc., сегодня combines with the words утром, днём, вечером, ночью:

Despite the fact that сегодня is an adverb, and thus theoretically it should not be able to be the object of a preposition, sometimes you find it as the object of the preposition на in the sense of “for”:

Ещё means still:

When ещё combines with the negative particle не, we translate it into English as “not yet.”

Sometimes ещё has the meaning of “also, another, additionally, some more.”

To say "at five minutes to two" a Russian literally says "without five two," where the preposition без means without and governs the genitive case. The "minute" words are often left out, but not necessarily so. When speaking of the minutes to one o'clock, they usually leave the number "one" out and simply say "hour." For example:

When speaking of "minutes till" for the other hours of the clock, they usually leave out the word "hour." Other examples:

Other entries dealing with time are under the categories "Time phrases" and "What time is it" and "At what time."