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«Кем быть?» [Who to be?]: The beginner’s guide to using the verb «быть» in both future and past tenses but leaving it out of the present tense altogether Posted by on Feb 5, 2010 in language

It is imperative for everyone to learn to be happy about the smaller things in life. An example of a small thing that can (and should!) bring happiness into everyone’s life is the fact that Russian verbs only have «три времена» [three tenses]: «настоящее время» [present tense], «прошедшее время» [past tense] and «будущее время» [future tense]. When it comes to asking «когда [when?] something took place in Russian language, all you really need to differ between is «сегодня» [today], «вчера» [yesterday] and «завтра» [tomorrow]. You don’t have to be anymore specific than that (this is after all not a post «о видах русского глагола» [about the aspects of the Russian verb] so wipe that frown off your face!). Now feel happy about this tiny fact of Russian grammar at its most simple for a while!

Okay, so have you felt happy for a little while now? And are you now ready to face some harsher facts of Russian grammar? Let’s go then!

When speaking about the three tenses of Russian verbs one must always first and foremost pay specific attention to one verb that breaks this simple flow of otherwise oh-so-easy-to-learn rules. This is the seemingly harmless verb «быть» [to be, exist]. The thing is that this verb has ‘lost’ its form in the present tense (and thus also place in such a sentence). There’s just no way of putting «быть» into a sentence with the present tense. «Сегодня» [today] one cannot use «быть» [to be, exist]. Don’t even try! Not even in the privacy of your own home! Of course, some of you might argue that the present tense form «есть» of it still remains in Russian language today, and that it is sometimes used by Russian themselves in phrases like «это не есть хорошо» [this is no good]. But I would not recommend that you go around saying that anyway – even if the Russians sometimes do it – learn to be more frank about things and name them by their proper names by firmly stating: «это плохо» [this is bad]. The present tense form can be found in the construction ‘to have something’ which can be directly translated as ‘at my place (or disposal) I have something’. That’s found in sentences like «у меня есть личный самолёт» [I have a private airplane] or «у меня есть четыре двоюродных брата» [I have four (male) cousins]. Also in more formal language you can find this form of the verb used in present tense with the meaning of ‘to be’ – but that’s it! That’s as far as the present tense of «быть» goes. What does one do then in Russian language, if you cannot use this form? Well, the easy answer does prove to be the correct one: leave it out of the sentence altogether!

Present tense: «Свежие следы на новом снегу» [Fresh steps in the new snow]. Past tense:
«С
вежие следы были на новом снегу» [There were fresh steps in the new snow]. Future tense: «Свежие следы будут на новом снегу» [There will be fresh steps in the new snow].

At first it will be strange to speak without using any verb whatsoever. Trust me, you’ll get used to it. And you’ll even come to like it. I bet you’ll start liking it so much that you will wonder why other languages haven’t done this as well. Leaving out the verb in a lot of what is said and written on a daily basis does save a lot of time. But before we go any further, we should get a bit acquainted with the forms of this verb in past and future tenses. As we all know (or should at least have heard about by now) the Russian verb changes according to the person performing a task, or – as is the case with «быть» – simply ‘is’ or ‘exists’. To keep things comprehensible we’ll focus first on what «я» [I] does to the verb (everybody likes to mostly talk about themselves anyway). The future tense of «быть» is «я буду» [I will, I will be]. The past tense of «быть» is «я был» [I was (if you’re a man)] and «я была» [I was (if you’re a woman)].

Usually you should put the noun following this verb in everybody’s favorite «творительный падеж» [instrumental case], but you don’t always have to. You can make up your own mind as to whether you want to describe that hot guy you met in the bar last Saturday with the instrumental case: «он был красавцем» [he was good-looker, handsome], or use the nominative instead: «он был красавец» [he was a good-looker, handsome]. The same goes, naturally, for that fascinating girl you danced at the disco with two weeks ago – either say «она была красавицей» [she was a beauty, a pretty woman] or «она была красавица» [she was a beauty, a pretty woman]. Back in the 19th century Russian literature using the nominative case in past tense together with «быть» meant the quality the noun described was a long-lasting one. Using instrumental case, however, meant that the quality was transitory, brief, fleeting and could thus easy cease ‘to be’ in the near future. Nowadays there is no difference between using these two cases after «быть», even though it is clearly more common in everyday Russian speech to use the instrumental case.

Present tense: «Онаисследовательница и литературовед» [She’s a researcher and a specialist in literature]. Past tense: «Она была исследовательницей и литературоведом» [She was a researcher and a specialist in literature]. Future tense: «Она будет исследовательницей и литературоведом» [She will be a researcher and a specialist in literature]. The male form for ‘researcher’ in Russian is «исследователь». There is, however, no female version of «литературовед».

Instead of using a verb in present tense in Russian you simplye put « – » in its place. In Russian this is called «тире» [dash, blank]. It is quite easy to use. All you need to do is put it between the pronoun and the noun and hope for the best. When speaking you’ll make a short pause between these two words, as if you were you’re in fact busy during this pause with putting an imaginary «тире» between them. Here’s an example of what happens to the verb «быть» in all three tenses. I’ve chosen the popular profession «космонавт» [astronaut, cosmonaut, spaceman, person trained to travel in a spacecraft] to illustrate it:

Future tense: «я буду космонавтом» [I will be an astronaut].

Past tense: «мой отец был космонавтом» [My father was an astronaut].

Present tense: «Алексей – космонавт» [Aleksey is an astronaut].

The same thing happens to any profession that you pair up with «быть». To illustrate this further we’ll use two other professions, one male «буфетчик» [person who works behind a counter] and one female «лаборантка» [laboratory assistant, person who helps out in a laboratory]. The female and male versions of these professions are «буфетчица» and «лаборант». Just so you know. Not all professions in Russian have both female and male versions, and that’s why we should find the time to rejoice when we find those that have both! Yay!

Future tense: «ты будешь буфетчиком?» [will you be a person who works behind the counter?]

Past tense: «дядя Фома был буфетчиком сорок лет» [uncle Foma (was a person who) worked behind the counter for forty years].

Present tense: «он – буфетчик в крупном магазине» [he works behind the counter at a large store].

Future tense: «мы тоже будем лаборантками!» [we will also be (female) laboratory assistants!]

Past tense: «тётя Люба была лаборанткой во время Великой отечественной войны» [aunt Lyuba was a laboratory assistant during the World War II].

Present tense: «она – лаборантка на химическом заводе» [she is a laboratory assistant at a chemical plant].

Present tense: «На стене фотографии Ленина и Сталина» [On the wall there are photographs of Lenin and Stalin]. Past tense: «На стене были фотографии Ленина и Сталина» [On the wall there were photographs of Lenin and Stalin]. Future tense: «На стене будут фотографии Ленина и Сталина» [On the wall there will be photographs of Lenin and Stalin]. (I took this picture in the summer of 2009 – it is from an office in some remote Russian factory…) 

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Comments:

  1. Bruce Dumes:

    Another wonderful post! I think you have a typo at the beginning where you list the three tense. You say “«настоящее время» [future tense]” when that is really present tense.

  2. Josefina:

    Спасибо, Bruce! I fixed it 🙂

    Slippery keyboards…

  3. Arthur:

    Fantastic post, as always. Thank you! One minor correction: I think you meant to use the verb “to cease” rather than “to seize” in one of the middle paragraphs when you say, “could thus easy seize ‘to be’ in the near future.”

  4. Bunni:

    chuckles, no you didn’t (fix it). It’s still showing future rather than present. 🙂 Awesome page, otherwise.

  5. Josefina:

    Bunni – don’t chuckle at me! I swear I fixed yesterday… okay, so I fixed it again (and changed another word into ‘cease’ – thanks Arthur!) and if it doesn’t look proper, neat and correct now then I give up…

  6. Shady_arc:

    In some other sentences words do not quite agree.
    “три времена” should be “три времени”. Numericals ending with words “два”, “три”, “четыре” require noun in Genitive singular for use in “Nominative” or “Accusative” (if “3 tenses” is used other than for subject/direct object, Genitive singular will be replaced by plural of the case required by the sentence). For “-мя” noun “время” it would be “времени”.

    The same here:
    “у меня есть четыре двоюродных братья” should be “у меня есть четыре двоюродных брата”.

    The rule is, basically:
    “…. один” + SINGULAR (of any case required)
    “…. два/ три/ четыре” + Genitive SINGULAR for Nom/Acc; for other roles in the sentence it is PLURAL of the corresponding case
    “…. пять, шесть…. десять, одиннадцать, …. сто, тысяча …” + Genitive PLURAL for Nom/Acc; if “numerical+ noun” appears in any position other than that, use PLURAL noun in a case required by a sentence.

    The reason is, “два, три, четыре” were similar to “adjectives” while “пять, шесть, семь” and all others were feminine nouns (like “кровать”). Besides, there was “Double” grammatical case in Russian for pairs of objects, which is there no more for like 400 or 500 years. It was used with “2”, but then was taken over by Genitive. Anyway, it is only natural that a “noun” would require Genitive plural. Compare “много страниц”, “дюжина страниц” and “десять страниц”. “Adjectival” numericals, on the other hand, are different, as they require singular.
    Note also that when 1,2,3,4 change their grammatical case, they have the endings similar to those of Russian adjectives, while the numbers 5,6 and so on resemble nouns.

    As to where to use a dash, ertain recommendations exist; for example, dash is rarely used to make this pause in negative sentences and never used in interrogative sentences. If the subject of the sentence is a personal pronoun, then a dash is only used to show just how important and significant the fact is. In plain sentences (“Он машинист”). It isn’t used.

  7. Roger:

    When did they stop using the present tense of the verb to be? … In the the Bible you will see that when Moses asks the Lord what to call him – Moses is told to just say (I don’t have a cyrillic keyboard) Ya esm’ ( i am)….Cheers

  8. Josefina:

    Roger, I have been asking myself the same question for years! And in the Bible not only Moses uses the present tense form of “быть” which back in the day was “есмь”, Jesus does it to! If I’m not mistaken, He does so when saying “я есмь дорога, правда и жизнь” in John 14:6, for example.

    But I guess the Russian translation of the Bible should be considered rather ‘archaic’…

  9. Irina:

    Hello! I’m a native speaker of Russian. Sorry, there are some mistakes in the article:
    1. «у меня есть четыре двоюродных браТЬЯ» – the ending in this case is wrong. The right one “у меня есть четыре двоюродных браТА”. Besides you can also say “у меня – четыре двоюродных брата” (without the verb “ЕСТЬ”).
    2. In the sentences «Свежие следы В новом снегу» and etc the preposition “В” is wrong. The right one is “НА” (on the surface): «Свежие следы НА новом снегу».
    3. Sentences with “there is/ there are” in Russian are started with an adverbial modifier of place ( or time). So “There were fresh steps in the new snow” is translated “НА НОВОМ СНЕГУ БЫЛИ СВЕЖИЕ СЛЕДЫ”, and “There will be fresh steps in the new snow” – “НА НОВОМ СНЕГУ БУДУТ СВЕЖИЕ СЛЕДЫ”.
    4. Such patterns as «Были свежие следы в новом снегу» and «Будут свежие следы в новом снегу» (starting with verbs) are very unusual in Russian. It’s more correctly to say: “Свежие следы были на новом снегу”/ “Свежие следы будут на новом снегу”. In English it equals to the construction: “The fresh steps were in the new snow”/ “The fresh steps will be in the new snow”.
    Yours faithfully,
    Irina, East Ukraine.

  10. Josefina:

    Спасибо, Ирина! Thank you for clearing up my grammar there! I didn’t know at first what would be correct: “в новом снегу” or “на новом снегу”, and actually used the correct one all the while writing the post, only changing it in the last minute… And it turns out that “на” was the right choice, as my intuition was telling me right from the start! Where to place the verb in Russian is a mystery to me, so I went with your suggestion and changed the place of the verbs in the sentences. I trust a native speaker. As much as I hope nobody gets mad at me for not being one!

  11. Irina:

    That’s all right, Josefina. I’m an English tutor (teaching both children and adults) and know how difficult is to understand a different grammar (especially preposition). One of my teenage pupil even says Enlish is stupid. THAT gets me mad. If you like I could consult you via e-mail.