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Russian imperfective vs perfective | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5336 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 9 of 17 06 February 2012 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think, that I'm slowly getting it, but will have to learn more words and use lang-8
when I get the vocabulary to practise it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Voodie Tetraglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4796 days ago 17 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, GermanC1, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Written), Greek | Message 10 of 17 06 February 2012 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Can you give me an example? I'm not sure I got it. If you mean that the action is set for a particular moment, but the outcome is unknown, you may just use the present tense: "Завтра я сдаю экзамен" - Tomorrow I'm taking an exam. (the verb "сдавать" is imperfective). Future Imperfective ("буду сдавать экзамен") is not a mistake, but sounds a little bit redundant. Future Perfective ("сдам экзамен") usually implies that you will succeed in the exam, so there is a result. If you're sure that you will fail at the exam, you'll say "я не сдам экзамен". Come to think of it, that IS kind of tricky :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5336 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 11 of 17 06 February 2012 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Я вас сказал. Очень трудно. Спасибо вам. :P Edited by zekecoma on 06 February 2012 at 1:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5661 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 12 of 17 06 February 2012 at 1:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't like to use terms like "succeeded" when talking about perfective, since it just confuses people. Things only started clicking for me when I began to ask whether we "finished" doing something and didn't intend to resume it. If we finished doing something in one go and don't expect to resume where we last left off it is probably perfective: "I ate a hamburger", "She read the letter". This also works in the future, if you intend to start and finish some task in one go: "We will clean the car tomorrow". If, though, you just stopped without necessarily finishing, and intend to resume at some point, then it is probably best to use an "imperfective" verb. Here are some examples in English: "I only eat hamburgers", "She reads the bible at bed time". This works in the future tense too: "We will clean the car every Wednesday". So, in the past tense, you decide which to use on whether or not you started and finished something in one go (perfective) or whether you kept plugging away repeatedly (imperfective). In the future tense, you decide which to use based on whether or not you are going to devote one lump of time to something (perfective) or keep coming back to something (imperfective). In the present tense, though, you always use imperfective. Some folks say this is because the task is "ongoing" if that helps you understand it. My own take on it is that it is just easier to think "present tense is always imperfective" and not try to justify it. A couple of years back I created a video which explains some of these issues, and that might help a bit. Be warned, though, that once you have grasped the big picture, there are still times where you scratch your head wondering why a given aspect was chosen, and some of these are simply idiomatic and have to be picked up over time. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5336 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 13 of 17 07 February 2012 at 10:04am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you so bloody much. :) Yeah my book and other websites would say "completed" and that did confuse me. But, when you mention finished, that made it make so much more sense to me. I believe, that I can finally understand this conception. Sad, that English doesn't really explain this all to well. But, I won't know, if I managed to fully understand this aspect stuff, until I have more vocabulary to test it out. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5218 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 14 of 17 07 February 2012 at 11:47am | IP Logged | |||||
I have had some moments like that in the past, but I always joked about it saying the same word again and that it somehow changed everything, when it was actually something inside my head all along. I wonder if you could elaborate on how 'completed' vs 'finished' made such a difference for you? What were you missing out on? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4764 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 15 of 17 07 February 2012 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by vonPeterhof on 07 February 2012 at 6:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5336 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 16 of 17 08 February 2012 at 12:16am | IP Logged | |||||
"I told you". :P I thought, that it was correct. D: 1 person has voted this message useful |
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