"по"

[thedevilishone.livejournal.com]

What's the difference:

думала
подумала

What does the "по" mean??

Comments

[kart.livejournal.com]

Imperfective vs. perfective verb aspect.

[cema.livejournal.com]

Думала: thought. Plain.
Подумала: has thought. The stress is on the fact that the action has completed.

(Not quite so, but works as a first approximation.)

But now consider подумывала. That little suffix means that she used to think, that is, did it from time to time. (This word is more rarely used, though.)

Again, I am not suggesting that these are necessarily good translations (often not: depends heavily on the context, on the fixed phrases etc), but they hint at the shades of meaning.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is quite close.

Подумывала is in fact very rare. Она иногда подумывала уехать из города. Somethimes [from time to time] she was thinking of leaving the city.
Она думала, что умеет петь. She thought that she could sing. (Every now&zen, she was considering her vocal abilities which she thought were really good.)
Она подумала, что умеет петь. She has thought that she could sing. (Once in a while, after a really succesful performance and/or a couple of vodka shots, she has decided that she is a really good singer.)

Она подумала

[noser.livejournal.com]

> Думала: thought. Plain.
> Подумала: has thought.

I think this explanation might be totally confusing for an English speaker. "thought" actually can be translated as "подумал", depending on the context. E.g. if you include what was thought in the same sentence:

I thought "That guy is smart!" -> Я подумал "Этот парень умён!"

Just like "I went" can be translated both as "Я шел" and "Я пошел". English speakers are just not used to put some verbs into the perfect tense, and whether it is perfective or not is determined from the context.

[poluzhivago.livejournal.com]

The differecnce between думала and подумала: по- in such grammar forms means short completed action VS prolonged not nesseserily completed.

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

Also, when someone told me "Ты подумал что я девушка? Тебе неправилно." The fact that in this brief conversation, this guy named Sala or something corrected me in my *brief* thought that he is indeed a guy and not, as I had thought, a girl.

The думал is harder to explain, but just that, as stated before, there's not definite start and finish.

[sibir-muzhyk.livejournal.com]

"Тебе неправилно" sounds total incorrectly. "You are wrong" = "Ты неправ"

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Ты неправ; ты ошибся; это неправильно; это не так; это неверно --- there are many expressions that mean "you were wrong," but "тебе неправильно" is completely off, that's right :)