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Tag Archives: russian verbs

We must cultivate our garden! (or, more about tools) Posted by on Sep 26, 2012

In Monday’s post, I talked about some of the basic ручные инструменты (“hand tools”) that might be employed by a плотник (“carpenter”) or a сантехник (“plumber”) — as well as some of the verbs that go along with these tools. Today, we’ll take that theme out into to the огород (“backyard vegetable patch”), with some…

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Walking a Dog or More About Transitive and Intransitive Verbs Posted by on Sep 20, 2012

Last week I did a post about whether to use nouns in accusative or genitive case after verbs. If you missed the post and don’t feel like reading it now, here’s the rule in the nutshell: If a verb is transitive, then use the accusative case. If a verb is intransitive, then use the genitive…

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An irregular verb that keeps on giving… Posted by on Aug 27, 2012

According to a lot of grammarians, the Russian language has only FOUR basic verbs with “irregular conjugations.” Students of Russian may be skeptical of this. And it’s frankly hard to believe that a verb as wacky as (for example) лечь, “to lie down,” is by any stretch of the imagination regular! After all — just…

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Verb of the Week: посвящать/посвятить Posted by on Aug 17, 2012

Всем привет! [Hello all!] It’s been a while since we have done a verb of the week, so I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about yet another wonderful Russian verb (because there’s nothing like a little Russian grammar to spice up your Friday, right?). I opened my verb book…

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Hang on, I want to weigh in on something… Posted by on Aug 8, 2012

In her excellent Friday post about telephone-related expressions, Natalie mentioned the verb вешать — which is literally “to hang,” and in the context of telephones can mean “to end the phone call by hanging up.” So I wanted to take a closer look at вешать, along with some other verbs (and a few nouns) that…

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Verb of the Week: открывать/открыть Posted by on Jul 6, 2012

I was actually planning on doing a post about a Russian pop song I like, but I think we ought to end this week with some грамматика [grammar]. I have prepared another post with a verb of the week. This week’s verb is relatively easy to understand: открывать/открыть, which means “to open.” The imperfective…

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Can’t Run Away from Verbs of Motion Posted by on Jun 15, 2012

Are you confused by the Russian verbs of motion? When to use which and what verbal aspect to choose? I found that the best way of figuring out the correct usage of verbs of motion is to practice-practice-practice. So let’s practice using the pair of verbs бегать and бежать, both meaning “to run”. To make…

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