Forming the Past Tense in Russian

A quick overview of forming the past tense in Russian, with a few tips on common points of confusion. It's a beginning level tutorial which does not cover verbs in -чь or other irregular forms.

[@lucasperez-lozanaalonso3107]

Great explanations. Voice is really reassuring and makes me want to follow the class. I always get surprised by how well you speak both English and Russian.

[@robert_wigh]

Thank you very much for making this video! I never though past tense in Russian could be so easy and now I am really happy. You are great at explaining! Благодарю вас!

[@JamesThomas-fj7ih]

This is the style of explanation I didn't know I was searching for. Great!

[@dianan9415]

thank you this helped me with my test on Russian language

[@yolandevddeijl4189]

Excellent explanations! This helps me tremendously. :-)

[@ComputerundRCcarBlog]

Your videos are perfect! Will I have the chance to see a video about word order soon? Anyway, thank you for these awesome videos. Greetings from Germany.

[@russiangrammar]

Sorry I didn't see this earlier! I do now have two videos on the basics of word order: see this playlist kzbin.info/aero/PLrIkLgUgjNHcRaTtzkvU4px_IbHypxIAf Danke!

[@malokeytheallaround]

Ahhh this helps so much! Thank you! ❤️

[@part9952]

It always sound as if you say "remove the damn myaki snak" 😂 no but joking apart nice and good video! Learned something!

[@malokeytheallaround]

So I was wondering why you put там after он жить since I didn’t know the verb yet. I looked it up and it said “to live” Basically I put the pieces together and figured out why там was there; and now I can’t stop laughing at if it wasn’t. “He lived” “He lived where??” “He... he lived...”

[@chernorsulaimanbah1836]

Very short and precise keep it up

[@TheGrmany69]

Strikingly similar to Spanish tense system and conjugations, it's even easier. Just rote memorisation for verbs, verb patterns and lexicon.

[@wenyibo]

thank you so much! it was very helpful!!!

[@Football_2201]

Thanks for help

[@camtheunicorpse2217]

can someone explain what is meant by singular masculine subject?

[@russiangrammar]

The subject of the sentence is the person or thing that's acting, doing something. Singular means there's only one, not more than one. Masculine could be a masculine person (брат, студент) or any noun that's grammatically masculine (паспорт, город). So there's a masculine singular subject in each of these sentences: Он читал газету. = He read/was reading the paper. Мой брат жил в Москве. = My brother lived in Moscow. Паспорт лежал на столе. = The passport lay on the table.

[@moviesync3131]

So the past tense in Russian covers all the aspects in English such as "simple past" "past perfect" "past continuous" "past perfect continuous"??

[@russiangrammar]

Yes, though you'll later learn about perfective verbs, which form their past tense in the same way, but can bring in additional nuances. Perhaps the main point is that the Russian system doesn't exactly mirror the English system.

[@seanyboyblu]

if i say “i delivered the message” it’s я доставил сообщение. but if i say “message delivered” it’s сообщение доставлено. i can’t look this up anywhere what this is called, but when no subject is messaged and it’s just an action that happened to an object, the verbs in the past tense always end in ано/ено. can you please help?

[@russiangrammar]

In сообщение доставлено, 'cообщение' actually is the subject; we use the form ending in -о to agree with that neuter subject. You'll also see the neuter ending when there really is no subject, as in 'Было решено, что...' = 'It was decided that...' Доставлено is a participle (like an adjective derived from a verb), and these forms do agree with the subject: Книги были куплены (plural), паспорт был потерян (masculine singular), etc. There's more on this type of participle (past passive, short form) here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r2i9mZKQrqh1oq8 - or see the videos on past passive participles in this playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLrIkLgUgjNHfTWmGkEqo7_ge7x50VQEWE

[@seanyboyblu]

@@russiangrammar спасибо

[@danielantonio441]

Could you please explaing here or in a new video the -ся and the -сь??? I dont understand them. I speak english, spanish and a little bit of russian, but, in spanish, when I say "мыться" this in spanish is "lavarse" that means "to wash oneself", but when I say "говориться", that doesnt means "to talk oneself" or yes? ._. I dont understand that 😭😭😔 could you explain it, please??? I have almost 2 years learning russian, and I dont understand this. (And other things, but I think this is the most important)... Thank you! Спасибо!!

[@russiangrammar]

+Daniel Antonio I'll do some videos on this, as it's a big topic; also a tricky one because the meaning can be different with different verbs. But for a quick summary: -'reflexive' meanings, where the subject acts on itself: Мы мылись. We washed (ourselves). ~ Я мыл посуду. I was washing the dishes. -'reciprocal' meanings, where two subjects act on each other: Они поцеловались. They kissed (each other). ~ Она поцеловала дочку. She kissed her daughter. -a passive sense: Как пишется 'ought'? How is 'ought' spelled? -Some can be used with or without -ся, but watch for case endings: Я интересуюсь русской музыкой = Меня интересует русская музыка. -Some are *always* used with -ся: улыбаться to smile, бояться to fear/be afraid of, гордиться to be proud of... There's more to say about them, but these are perhaps the main points. If you can't bring them all into a single concept don't worry, neither can I! Watch for these main patterns but be willing to learn some verbs on an individual basis. :)

[@danielantonio441]

+Russian grammar большое спасибо!! Oh yeah, its a big topic, and its hard, but its not as hard as the letters at the beginning of the verbs (like o-, pri-, u-, ect), anyway, I am waiting for your future videos! Thank u for all the vids! Greetings from Monterrey, México!:)

[@SNVampyre]

"-ся" means "себя". So "Я мылся" is "Я мыл себя".

[@part9952]

Thank you so much! I have always wondered about these "sya" verbs..

[@laaw8841]

I've been studying Russian for a month now and it still blows my mind that the past tense is marked by gender and not person!

[@russiangrammar]

That's because forms like купил, купила were originally participles - essentially adjectives derived from verbs - so, like adjectives, they were marked for gender, not person. Many centuries ago, "I bought" (f.) would have been есмь купила, where the auxiliary есмь marks the person (like 'have' in English "I have bought"). The auxiliary fell away in Russian but you can still see it in the Czech 'koupila jsem' = 'I bought'. :)

[@laaw8841]

@@russiangrammar that makes sense and makes it easier to understand. Those occurrences in languages is what makes me love them. Thank you very much for the explanation!!

[@gonzalez6073]

Are past tense types of conjugations??

[@russiangrammar]

The past tense really just has to do with time. It’s formed in the same way for both the е-conjugation (читать, жить) and и-conjugation (говорить, смотреть).

[@gonzalez6073]

Russian grammar Спасибо за комментарии!!

[@camtheunicorpse2217]

Also what is a constant?

[@russiangrammar]

Do you mean a consonant? That means a sound like б, в , г, м, д, etc., where the airflow is stopped or constricted; as opposed to vowel sounds (а, э, и, ы, о, у in Russian), where the air flows more freely. For the purposes of this video, you can just remember that for verbs with infinitives that end in -ся like учиться, use -ся for the masculine past form after л: учился, and -сь for the other past forms, which end in vowels: училась, учились, etc.

[@camtheunicorpse2217]

Russian grammar thank you so ,much! your videos are really helpful

[@fredpourlesintimes]

And for a verb like " репост "?

[@LoLMasterManiac]

репóстил

[@russiangrammar]

'Repost' can be a verb or a noun in English, but I've only seen it as a noun in Russian; you can say делать/сделать репост ("to do a repost"): Как узнать кто сделал репост в фейсбуке = How to find out who reposted in Facebook. Russian needs verbs to look like verbs, so when a foreign verb is borrowed, you'll often see a suffix like -овать added. Then it can be conjugated like a Russian verb. to organize -> организовать to interest -> интересовать to park -> парковать

[@LoLMasterManiac]

@@russiangrammar dude, in Russian internet slang we've had loaned "to repost" since ages, but we slightly change the word to "зарепостить", "репостнуть". Sure those aren't official loanwords but don't act like there is no verb version of the word "repost" in Russian.

[@russiangrammar]

@@LoLMasterManiac Sure - this gets to my point that you don't use репост itself as a verb; you add something (in this case за- or -нуть) to make it look and behave like a verb. Adding -овать is a common way to do this, but certainly not the only way - thanks for posting other options used with this word. ))

[@russiangrammar]

Yes, -ить is pretty common too for making a foreign word into a Russian verb: гуглить - to google, I've also heard шопиться - to shop.

[@anum4700]

It was helpful but i don't understand the last

[@russiangrammar]

Hi An Um, which part specifically is your question referring to? ))

[@lescommercantesdindochine1954]

QUESTION: In the (amazing) song "МЕТЕЛЬ", by Д.Д.Т., there is a phrase "Жизнь по горло занесло". In my uneducated, humble, drunken opinion, the subject "жизнь" is feminine, and the suffix "-ла" should thus be used to form the past tense of the verb "занести", instead of "-ло." Therefore, the correct form of the verb for this phrase would be "Жизнь по горло занесла." Is Д.Д.Т. weak in grammar, or am I mistaken ?

[@russiangrammar]

Занести is often used in an impersonal form for covering, overwhelming, or moving something somewhere: дорогу занесло снегом = the road is covered with snow; try a google image search for "занесло снегом" and you'll get the idea. (Or try just занесло in the Russian National Corpus for other nuances too: ruscorpora.ru) Since there's no subject, we use the neuter sg. ending. So like дорогу above, жизнь here is in the accusative (those pesky -ь feminines don't change in the acc. sing...). As for the meaning... I won't attempt an interpretation in a KZbin comment but there's an interesting discussion of the song, and this line, here: vk.com/topic-367_28577648 Kudos, even in an uneducated humble drunken state (which I doubt!) you're observant and can pose a good question. 🙂

[@lescommercantesdindochine1954]

@@russiangrammar I think I can relate to that, as we use "on" in French - like the impersonal "one" in English (as in "one should not burp at the table"). Is this what you are referring to ? Or maybe more like "Il fait beau" in French... but who the hell is "il" ? (God, some impersonal force/being... etc). So, it would be "оно "in Russian, used in that "impersonal" manner, designating hypothetical (not specific) people/things, thus resulting in the "ло" suffix. Am I totally lost, or on in the correct train of ideas ? By the way, you are one of my heroes, man !

[@lescommercantesdindochine1954]

@@russiangrammar ... and thanks a million for the VK link ! ... now I have yet another new hobbie to schedule for ! HA !

[@lescommercantesdindochine1954]

@@russiangrammar Let me take one last stab at this here: "(оно) занесло жизнь по горло". 1) "жизнь" is in the (difficult to identify) accusative, as it is a pesky -ь feminine, and, in fact, the object of the phrase. 2) "занесло" correctly takes the "ло" suffix, as "оно" is the unmentioned/impersonal/implied subject in the phrase (оно = ло suffix for past tense). I hope that I am not completely out to lunch here, in my imaginary "make shit up" world.