GrammatikVerben Aspekte

In Russian, verbs come in two aspects: imperfective and perfective.

Imperfective (несовершенный вид) focuses on the process, repetition, or duration of an action.

• читать (to read, be reading)
• писать (to write, be writing)
• делать (to do, be doing)

Perfective (совершенный вид) focuses on the result, completion, or one-time action.

• прочитать (to read completely)
• написать (to write (and finish))
• сделать (to do (and finish))

Verb pairs

Most Russian verbs exist in pairs: one imperfective and one perfective.

• читать (to read) ↔ прочитать (to read completely)
• писать (to write) ↔ написать (to write and finish it)
• говорить (to speak) ↔ сказать (to say)
• рабо́тать (to work, generally) ↔ порабо́тать (to work for a while)

How to learn the aspects

The verb aspects are one of the more difficult things in Russian because for every sentence you need to select the correct aspect. To practice, you can think during your day about which aspect (ongoing/habitual versus one-time/completed) would fit best for which situation.

For example, after eating breakfast, you could say either

• "I was eating breakfast" / "я завтракала" (imperfective, ongoing) if you focus on the process or
• "I ate breakfast" / "я позавтракала" (perfective, one-time/completed) if you want to tell that you finished eating.

Below we also have exercises to practice when to choose which aspect.

It takes a while to get used to the aspects, so try to practice them continuously and don't worry if you get it wrong sometimes, people will still understand you.

Main idea

• Imperfective → focus on the process ("what was or is happening")
• Perfective → focus on the result ("what was or will be completed")

The difference is often small. For example there are two ways to say the sentence "Did you do your homework?":

• Ты делал домашнее задание? (делать is imperfective)
  "Did you work on your homework?"
  → with the focus on the process or experience.
• Ты сделал домашнее задание? (сделать is perfective)
  "Did you finish your homework?"
  → with the focus on the result.

Just by choosing the verb aspect (делал vs сделал) you change the meaning of the sentence.

Another example

Consider the verb pair читать / прочитать.

• Я читал книгу → I was reading a book (process)
• Я прочитал книгу → I read the book and finished it (completed)

The difference is again the process vs completion.

When to use imperfective

• Process / ongoing action
  Я читаю книгу. (I am reading a book.)
• Repeated or habitual actions
  Я часто читаю. (I often read.)
• General facts
  Я говорю по-русски. (I speak Russian.)
• Background actions
  Я читал, когда он пришёл. (I was reading when he arrived.)

When to use perfective

• Completed action / result
  Я прочитал книгу. (I finished reading the book.)
• Single, one-time action
  Он сказал это. (He said it.)
• Sequence of events
  Он пришёл, сел и начал есть. (He came, sat down, and started eating.)

To each their own

The general pattern of imperfective = process and perfective = completion is very useful, but each verb pair can develop its own nuance or specialized meaning. Some examples:

Some perfective partners simply mean "do it once" or "complete it", while others can add meanings like "for a while", "begin", "achieve", or "reach a result". That's why aspect is important, but vocabulary-specific meaning matters too.

Which aspect is more common?

In everyday language, do imperfective or perfective verbs get used more often? We couldn't find any study, but we checked the 360,000 sentences in our database and usage was almost equal with 55% imperfective and 45% perfective verbs.

Questions

Aspect often answers different questions:

• Imperfective → What were you doing?
  Что ты делал?
• Perfective → What did you achieve / finish?
  Что ты сделал?

Present, past, future

Imperfective verbs have all three tenses:

• Я читаю (I am reading)
• Я читал (I was reading)
• Я буду читать (I will be reading)

Perfective verbs have only past and future (no present):

• Я прочитаю (I will read and finish)
• Я прочитал (I finished reading)

The “present” form of a perfective verb actually expresses the future.

See also the grammar about the past or the future.

Negation

With negation, imperfective is sometimes used to emphasize that something did not happen in general:

• Вчера я не работал. (I didn’t work yesterday.)

Perfective negation can imply failure:

• Вчеро я не поработал. (I didn’t manage to work yesterday (I wanted to work but I couldn't).)

Summary

• Russian verbs have two aspects: imperfective (process) and perfective (result).
• Imperfective: ongoing, repeated, general actions.
• Perfective: completed, one-time, result-focused actions.
• Perfective verbs do not have a true present tense.
• Most verbs exist in aspect pairs like говорить/сказать.