Adverbs of Place

Adverbs of place designate a place of action, point of departure or direction of movement. They answer the questions Где? (Where?), Куда? (Where to?), Откуда? (From where?).

The following table illustrates how adverbs of place are grouped depending on the question they answer.

Где?	Куда?	Откуда?
Он здесь. (He's here.)	Он идёт сюда. (He's going here.)	Я отсюда не уйду. (I'll not move from here.)
Он там. (He is there.)	Он идёт туда. (He's going there.)	Он пришёл оттуда. (He came from there.)
Он справа от меня. (He's on my right.)	Он повернул направо. (He turned to the right.)	Справа от вас дерево. (You have a tree on your right.)

Forming the Russian Adverbs of Place

Most adverbs of place are formed by joining prepositions with nouns in the corresponding case. Playing the role of adverbs, these junctions do not change by gender, number or cases.

Preposition	Noun	Resulting adverb
в	верх	вверх (up)
с	зад	сзади (back)
из	нутро	изнутри (internally)

Adverbs of place often include genitive and prepositional nouns ending in -y, as in наверху (above), внизу (below), сверху (from above), снизу (from below).

Using the Adverbs of Place

Adverbs of place can be used with the particles -то, -нибудь, кое- to indicate a certain degree of generality or uncertainty:

1. use the particle -то when you are uncertain about exact place or direction

Машина куда-то едет.
(The car is going somewhere.)
the speaker is not sure where it goes exactly

Он живёт где-то в Москве.
(He lives somewhere in Moscow.)
the speaker does not know about the exact location
2. use -нибудь to be general about options to be made

Давай поедем куда-нибудь.
(Let's go somewhere.)
it's not important where to go exactly

Установи палатку где-нибудь возле озера.
(Put up a tent somewhere near the lake.)
the exact location near the lake is not important for the speaker
3. use кoe- when you know exact place or direction but do not want to talk about it for some reason. This particle is rarely used in Russian.

Koe-где в этой комнате спрятан ключ. Найдите его.
(There is a key hidden somewhere in this room. Find it.)

Adverbs of place can also be used with the negative particles ни and не in front of them. The particle ни is used in personal sentences, while the particle не is used in impersonal sentences. Compare these two examples:

Я никуда не пойду.
(I will not go anywhere.)

Мне некуда пойти.
(I have nowhere to go.)
Note that the verb пойти is in the infinitive because the sentence is impersonal.