Funny verbs..

[nanki--poo.livejournal.com]

Hey guys, I've been doing some intense learning the last few days, about tenses, perfectives, imperfect, etc, etc. I'm so glad I took latin class in high school, makes all this so much easier. Anyway, could someone explain the verbs like:

Найти, Дойти, etc.

are they just irregular? Can they be turned into past tense? I tried doing that through a russian translator online (я найл) or similar, but in the end I used similar imperfect verbs, for simplicity's sake. Also are there any others?

In fact, while I'm at it, I've been going through the dictionary linking up imperfect verbs with their perfective versions (or at least what the dictionary says are their perfective versions), are these verbs the same, simply in different form, or are they separate verbs with similar meanings?

for example:
Играть, играю -> Сыграть, сыграю
or Говорить, говорю -> Сказать, скажу, скажешь
some of them even just have a prefix added: Слушать, слушаю -> Послушать, послушаю

and also also while I'm at it (sorry for indulging), in past tenses (eg он Слушал) can you drop the он? I wrote something out in russian today and it just looked a little awkward with so many of them.

спасибо!

Comments

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

Найти, Дойти - these are prefixed forms of идти. They will conjugate in the past like идти does - шел, шла, шли.

As for imperfective vs perfective verbs - they have the same meaning in general, but their use depends on aspect. English has some aspect marking, but in Russian it's more explicitly linked with verb instead of tense. Getting used to this will be a big part of studying Russian.

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

"Найти, Дойти - these are prefixed forms of идти."
You are wrong. Искать - найти, Идти - Дойти.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Искать (to seek) is not a form of найти (to find).

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

We are talking about russian word Искать and Найти. Найти - совершенная форма (perfective) of verb Искать.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I thought that найти is the perfective form of находить - both of which mean "to find."

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

Currently, you are right! But what is perfective form of Искать? trying to find.... :)

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

According to lingvo.ru/lingvo, it's поискать. (I guess that would mean "to search for a little while," or "to search a bit.")

But not all verbs have to have both perfective and imperfective forms.

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

What about "отыскать"?

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

According to lingvo:

отыскать
(кого-л./что-л.)
несовер. - отыскивать; совер. - отыскать

find; track down, тж. перен. run to earth (зверя на охоте) ; несовер. тж. look for, search (for)

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

Ok. what about сыскать?

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should teach you how to use lingvo.

сыскать
совер.; (кого-л./что-л.); разг.
find

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

You could not answer if you don't want to do it )))

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I'm just wondering why a native speaker is asking me for help learning Russian. :)

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

I'm just chatting ))
I'm sorry if I disturb you. )

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Not at all. I find this quite amusing. :)

Do we know any more derivatives of искать?

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

That's easy, for example:
Выискать, подыскать, обыскать :))

If to be honest, I thought you are Russian )))

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

A common mistake, but not one that I find offensive. :)

выискивать
(кого-л./что-л.)
несовер. - выискивать; совер. - выискать
discover, find out, hunt out , hunt up; seek out, try to discover/trace, try to find out; track down, light upon, run to earth

подыскать
несовер. - подыскивать; совер. - подыскать
find

обыскивать
(кого-л./что-л.)
несовер. - обыскивать; совер. - обыскать
search; conduct a search of (о помещении тж.)

[nicodimus-canis.livejournal.com]

That's all, my vocabulary is over :(

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

And now mine is much enriched. :)

Thank you for the exercise. Maybe later we'll discover another word that needs investigating.

[yozhevich.livejournal.com]

But morphologically, найти and certainly дойти are prefixed forms of идти.

[unlightened.livejournal.com]

Perfective of искать is surely отыскать. Найти even has a slightly different meaning of not only "to find after purposeful seeking", but also "to find occidentally". IMHO.

[oryx_and_crake]

In он cлушал, unfortunately, you cannot drop the pronoun (unless it is absolutely clear from the context who is doing what) because the past tense form does not indicate which person it refers to - i.e. я слушал, ты слушал, он слушал.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

«Послушать» is the “perfective aspect” of «слушать». Please don't ask me what it means—to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure yet.

«Говорить» and «сказать», however, are respectively “to speak” and “to say”. They're not the same verb.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I find it's easier not to try to equate the say-speak-tell trio with говорить-сказать.

I find native Russian speakers doing this in English all the time (e.g. "She told that she went to the store," which in English is wrong; it should be "She said that she went to the store," or "She told me that she went to the store"), and I know when I was first learning Russian I always used "сказать" for "tell." The problem is that in English you can say "I told you three times to clean your room!" in which case you should say "говорить" in Russian, not "сказать."

[anonymousette.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, what would that sentence be in Russian? Thanks :)

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Something like "Три раза я тебе говорила комнату убирать!" (I am still not very good at choosing natural word order, so if someone else has a better suggestion...)

[anonymousette.livejournal.com]

Thanks! My Slavic ear tells me that the word order is fine :)

[noser.livejournal.com]

Nope, сказала is perfectly fine in this context.

Я три раза тебе сказала убрать комнату! - that's how a native speaker like me would put it

You can also say говорила because of the repetitive action. One of the few case where it does not matter.

убирать - wrong aspect (the action is to be completed in its entirety, so must be perfective)

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

One of the few case where it does not matter.

Does it mean something different (different connotations) if you use one instead of the other?

[noser.livejournal.com]

I'd say not really, but the говорила version needs an 'уже' to sound more clear (if you intend to say "and now I'm telling you the fourth time"): Я тебе уже три раза говорила убрать комнату!

If you don't use уже, it sounds a bit ambiguous, because you can use the same construct in retelling what happened some time ago, as in: "Помнишь, вчера я тебе три раза говорила убрать комнату". So, time is undefined, which makes it sound a bit off.

"Сказала" version is ОК without уже, it's clear you're talking about very recent past (unless you specify otherwise). I'm afraid I can't explain why, but that's the difference.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Aspect is my least favorite part of grammar, because it's so very different from English, so it helps a lot when people can explain the differences to me. Thanks for the explanation!

[khathi.livejournal.com]

"Найти", "Дойти" and so on are just forms of "идти", so they conjugate in the past like this word: "шёл", "шли", "шла", "шло" and so on with respective prefix. About perfect -- well, in Russian perfect isn't a tense, like in English. Instead, each verb has an aspect, which might be perfect or imperfect.

Indications of perfect is usually done by prefixes, right, so it's difficult to say whether it's different words or just other form of words. However there's general agreement, as I understand it, to account words with differences in prefixes and suffixes as different words, but words differing in endings only -- as a forms of a same word.

About dropping pronoun -- it's a subject here, and it indicates an actor. It is often important pointer on a context of the phrase, so in general sibject is rarely omitted. But if you feel that you can get away with predicate only -- it might be worth trying. ^_^

!

[vorobeika.livejournal.com]

"Найти" is a perfect form of "искать" :)

Re: !

[khathi.livejournal.com]

Semantically. Morphologically it's still a form of "идти". One of many idiosyncrasies of Russian. ;) And this question was about morphology, really.

Re: !

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

??? But, well, for someone trying to learn a language, semantics is kind of important. "Найти" means "to find", "Дойти" means "to walk", or rather "to reach the destination/goal", which is an ungainly translation, but a correct one. I'm sure you'll agree that finding and walking (or reaching a destination) are different things.

Re: !

[llill.livejournal.com]

"Найти" is a perfect form of "находить", not "искать"

Re: !

[vorobeika.livejournal.com]

You are right :)

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

Do keep in mind that найти is not a verb of motion. It means "to find"

And also keep in mind that c is also a prefix, and the ы in сыграть is merely a mutation. Also, there is a slew of prefixes out there that changes the meaning of the verb, such as предсказать-предсказывать, пересказать-пересказывать, подсказать-подсказывать, высказать-высказывать. It is a long and treacherous path.

As for говорить-сказать, technically the perfective form is поговорить, but this means to "speak for a little while." Мы вчера сидели и поговорили (Last night we sat and talked), a better word, however, might be разговаривать (to converse, chat). Мы вчера сидели и разговаривали. There, that's better.

As apollotiger pointed out, говорить means to speak (Я говорю по-русски), but it could also mean to say (Он говорит, что нам нельзя входить - He says that we are not allowed to enter). And сказать is the perfective form of "to say." He said that she's pregnant - Он сказал, что она беременна. I'll tell you in a moment - Щас скажу (note: this is colloquial of Я сейчас скажу).

It's a bit heavy, but not all verbs are as complicated as говорить/поговорить/сказать. But you will have to feel them if you want to improve. Reading a lot of beginners texts will help you loads.

[msk01.livejournal.com]

Мы вчера сидели и поговорили (Last night we sat and talked),

I'm sorry. This is wrong.
If you use prefix with one verb, you should use it with another, or don't use them at all.
"Мы сидели и говорили" or "Мы посидели и поговорили".

In the first sentence would be better to add "говорили о smth". The sensence sounds unfinished without it. With prefix "по-" these verbs become finished. They are about some actions which were finished some time ago.

"Я поговорил с ним об этом" means we spoke about it and the discussion was ended, the question is closed now. We don't need to speak with him about it anymore.

"Я говорил с ним об этом" - means we spoke about it, but the result is unclear, maybe I need some more time to finish that question with him.

Sorry, I'm not a linguist, just try to help you :)

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

Мы вчера сидели и поговорили (Last night we sat and talked),
I'm sorry. This is wrong.

Nope. Unlike English, Russian doesn't have any universal consistency rules, and appropriateness of using prefixed and non-prefixed verbs may vary. So «сидели и поговорили» sounds perfect, here you put emphasis either on 'finishness' of the conversation or on the fact that there are some other activities during the meeting (besides talk) while the party itself is continuous.

[oryx_and_crake]

«сидели и поговорили» definitely does NOT sound perfect to me. Perfective and imperfective verbs do not mix well.

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a very subtle issue of stylistics.

[ekeme-ndiba.livejournal.com]

For example, «мы сидели: поговорили и выпили»: here imperfective verb describes more general, prolonged action, while perfective ones stand for detailed activities completed during the first one.

[oryx_and_crake]

This is a bad example because сидели and поговорили do not belong to the same "list" - поговорили and выпили do, which actually proves my point. But even in your example, посидели would look way, way better in place of сидели.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

+1.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

This sounds okay, but it's quite a different sentence. "мы сидели" is separated from the rest of the actions.

[sofa-m.livejournal.com]

"мы сели, поговорили и выпили" sounds better to a native speaker, it describes a chronology of events - first we sat down then we talked and then we drank

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I agree with everyone who says it sounds wrong. I'm a native speaker, and the sentence sounds incomplete. "Мы вчера сидели и поговорили" needs to include what we had a chat about. And even then, without adding the prefix to "сидели", it sounds a bit odd, though I won't go so far as to say it is incorrect.