Russian Imperatives (I): Vowel stems

Telling someone to do something in Russian isn't hard, but there are 3 slightly different forms you may need. In this video we'll have a quick overview of what to do when the stem ends in a vowel letter.
Note: there's a typo - a misplaced stress mark around 2:00 - where открыва́ть and открыва́й should of course have end stress. Спасибо to sharp-eyed viewer geerthendrickx4108 for pointing it out. :)

[@jeffreyd508]

Never change your style of videos! Most other videos would take 10+ minutes to explain what you did! The speed and length are perfect! (thats what SHE said).

[@ettonabo]

Just offering my support for this channel, thank you so much for all you do for us Russian-learners!

[@aussiesurfer7236]

Thank you!! Something new for me to study!!

[@prohacker5086]

Тhank you so much! Also your voice is so, uhm, deep, yeeah, it sounds very cool :P

[@theycallmezeal]

Maybe this is nitpicking, but if perfective verbs don't get used in the present tense, how do they have an они present tense form with which to form the imperative?

[@russiangrammar]

No, it's a reasonable question - to be more precise, one could say 'take the они form of the present/perfective future..' Sometimes it's called the 'non-past' form.

[@ghen3x]

At 2:00, that stress on открывать/открывай looks very strange. Isn't it открыва́й instead of откры́вай? (from открыва́ют)

[@russiangrammar]

It should indeed be открыва́й (and открыва́ть a few seconds before). Placing the accents involves drag and drop, sometimes I miss and don't catch it in time. I've updated the description and will update/replace the video when I have the chance. Thanks for pointing this out!

[@jeffreyd508]

02:05 did you ever make a video explaining that?

[@russiangrammar]

Not yet, thanks for the reminder! I'm finishing up a detailed course on motion verbs, will get to this afterwards. In the meantime, a quick summary: use aspect with commands, in general, as you'd expect: imperfective for general, repeated actions; perfectives for polite requests to do a one-time action. But: imperfective is normally used for invitations (Садитесь! Приезжайте в гости!) and negated commands (не говори об этом здесь); perfective is often used for warnings about something you might do accidentally (не забудь об этом, не потеряй деньги).

[@jeffreyd508]

Thanks for the detailed response! I read in a grammar book that negated commands must ALWAYS be in imperfective. True?

[@russiangrammar]

Most negated commands will be imperfective... but you can hear perfective negated commands in the context of a warning not to do something accidentally. So that's most common in phrases like не потеряй (don't lose..), не забудь (don't forget), не упади (don't fall down), etc.