Russian grammar

This is a summary of the most important aspects of Russian grammar. It is not a substitute for a comprehensive Russian coursebook, such as those available from Red Square Russian.

Verbs

Pattern 1 – знать (to know)

Pattern 2 – говорить (to speak)

Pattern 3 – жить (to live)

Note: if the ending is not stressed, ё will be replaced by е, as in Pattern 1. In some circumstances the subject can be dropped if doing so does not introduce ambiguity.

Aspects

All verbs have an associated aspect, either perfective or imperfective. The imperfective aspect is the most common and is used to express a habitual or incomplete action. It is also used to express the present tense (знать, говорить and жить are all imperfective verbs). The perfective aspect is used to express a one-off or complete action. As a consequence of this system, most verbs come in pairs, e.g. читать (to read) and прочитать (to have read). Aspects remove the need for additional tenses commonly found in French, Spanish etc.

Past tense

The imperfective and perfective past tenses are both formed the same way. Drop the infinitive ending (usually -ть) and add the following endings to the stem depending on the subject:

Note: while the verb "to be" (быть) is not used in the present tense, it is used in the past and future tenses. The rules above can be applied in the same way with the stem бы-.

Future tense

The imperfective future tense is formed by combining the right form of быть with an imperfective infinitive verb. It follows Pattern 3 (unstressed) with the stem буд-.

The perfective future tense is formed by following the correct pattern, similarly to imperfective verbs in the present tense.

Reflexive verbs

Reflexive verbs generally indicate that the action is performed to oneself, i.e. the subject is also the object, or the object does not exist (intransitive). They may also indicate that the action is performed between two entities.

Reflexive verbs are formed by adding an additional suffix, either -сь (if the verb ends in a vowel) or -ся (if it does not).

Gerunds

Gerunds, also known as adverbial participles, provide additional contextual information to supplement the main verb in a sentence. Except in some common, fixed expressions, they are relatively rare in casual speech but abundant in written texts.

The imperfective gerund is used to indicate a background action taking place at the same time as the main verb (i.e. "while"). It is generally formed by adding -я to the они form of a present tense verb. After sibilants, -а is added instead.

The perfective gerund is used to indicate an action which preceded the main verb (i.e. "having"). It is generally formed by dropping the infinitive ending and adding -в. If the stem ends in a consonant, this becomes -ши. For reflexive verbs, this becomes either -вшись or -шись.

Passive voice

When the process is more important, it is sufficient to simply add the reflexive ending (-ся) to a verb. This is the most common way to form the passive voice. It is rarely used with perfective verbs. Note that some reflexive verbs will naturally make use of the passive voice.

If the result is more important, you must form the passive participle by adding the correct adjectival ending to the verb. This is a more formal way of expressing the passive voice. For present tense verbs, use the мы form. For past tense (perfective) verbs, drop the -л and add -нн- if the stem ends in -а. If the stem ends in -и, drop the -л and add -енн-. If the past tense form does not end in -л, add -ённ-. If the stem ends in something else, add -т-.