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*
NOTE *

All
phrases intended for translating/listening practice have been
deleted.

Welcome
to Episode #5 of Understanding Spoken Russian. If you’re new to the
series, I recommend starting from the first episode, because the
lessons are cumulative, and in each one I assume you’re comfortable
with the material learned in all prior episodes.

Let’s
get to it. I’ll start by rattling off a few related words…View,
vista, visual…вид

Listen
again: вид It translates as
“view”..like, Our hotel room has a great вид…a
great view.

And
it’s the root
of our new word for this lesson. Listen? увидеть

So
I’d like you to connect that core sound—вид—to those three
English words which also begin with a “V” sound. What were
they again?

Now,
увидеть is the dictionary form of
the verb, but we’ll be working with the past tense today.

Here
it is in context…

He
said: Yesterday I saw Grandma in the library.

And
she said: When I was in Hollywood, I saw Angelina Jolie.

So,
the verb увидеть translates as “to
see.” And did you notice that Babushka and Angelina changed to
Babushku (Бабушку)
and Angelinu (Анджелину)
because seeing them counts as doing something to them?

How
would you translate this?

–
– –

What
were those three English words that we want to connect to the word
вид?

They
begin with a V sound…

Alright,
let’s review some of the key points from the last episode. How would
you translate these phrases?

–
– –

For
today’s main topic, I want to talk about something called verb
aspect. So, we’re going to hear phrases where the same action is
described by seemingly different verbs. Listen and I’ll translate:

Я
купила сендвич.

I
bought a sandwich.

Я
покупала все эти сувениры в Лондоне,
кроме этого магнита.

I
bought all these souvenirs in London, except for this magnet.

Hmm.
Both sentences translate as “I bought…” but she used
different verbs. Я купила in the
first, and я покупала in the
second. Now why would she do that? Let’s listen to a simpler
example…

Я
сказала <Нет.>

That
was: I said no.

Мы
говорили о музыке.

We
were talking about music.

Here’s
the Big Question: What’s the difference between I said…and I
was talking?

With
“said” you get this sense of the whole thing. You said it,
and you were done. But with talking…you envision this
ongoing conversation. And in that first example: Я
купила сендвич. Hearing that, a Russian person
envisions the whole transaction. She stood in line, paid the guy, and
walked away with her sandwich.

But
that other phrase: Я покупала все эти
сувениры I bought all these souvenirs in London…
There, we see her going from shop to shop, maybe over the course of a
week…it’s about the process of her shopping.

Books
have been written exclusively on the topic of Russian verb aspect,
but what’s nice is that, in this course, we don’t have to worry about
the rules. We just want a general understanding. And for now, all I
want to say is this:

Verbs
that we call perfective emphasize the result.

Verbs
we call imperfective emphasize the process.

Take
the idea of reading. Here are the two forms in the past tense
Читал / прочитал

See
if you can determine which one emphasizes result, and which
emphasizes process.

Imagine
you’re a creative writing teacher and you tell a student: Hey,
Jimmy..I just прочитал your story
and I thought it was excellent. I loved the ending.

…versus….

Last
night I settled into my armchair and читал
The Shining by Stephen King. I was so into it, I nearly jumped
out of my chair when the phone rang.

Я
прочитал your whole story. There’s
a result. We read it from start to finish.

Я
читал the book for a while…is about the
process. He was reading it and then something happened. He clearly
did not finish it. So…

Я
прочитал is perfective.

Я
читал is imperfective.

With
that verb pair, the difference between perfective and imperfective is
pretty clear. But with other verbs, it’s less so. Like today’s verb
увидеть. Do you think it’s the
perfective or imperfective form? Listen…

Today
in the supermarket I saw your mom.

Yesterday
in the park I saw your dog.

Those
are perfective. They’re emphasizing that they saw your mom or saw
your dog…and that’s pretty much it. Compare that with the
imperfective…

In
the podval I was seeing only books and photographs. You get the sense
that they were looking around for a while, probably trying to find
something, but all they saw were books and pics. (The word was видела
without that ‘u’ sound in front.)

Again,
verb aspect is a big deal when you’re trying to speak Russian.
We work with it in great detail in my conversational Russian courses.
It’s actually really interesting. But in this podcast, we just need
to be aware that Russian uses two different verbs to convey these two
aspects of any action. That’s my main objective here. Because I don’t
want you saying,”Wait, why is he saying Прочитал?I
thought the verb “to read” was читал.”

Now
you know. They’re two versions, two aspects, of the same verb.

Next:
Can you translate this brief exchange?

–
– –

Now
imagine you’re the teacher, and your student says…Hey, wait…I
thought купил was the verb meaning “to
buy.” Suddenly it’s покупал? What
do you tell them?

Hit
pause and give it a shot.

I’d
tell them: Russian uses pairs of verbs to describe the same action.
Купил means he bought the coffee and
that’s that. Whereas покупала conveys
the process of shopping—she was looking and buying some things and
not buying others. The two forms are an aspectual pair, купил
is the perfective form, emphasizing result. Покупал
is the imperfective and emphasizes the process.

Let’s
look at another aspect pair. In earlier episodes we encountered the
verb смотрел.

Can
you take a stab at translating it? Andrusha is supposed to be doing
his homework, but when I listen at his door, it doesn’t seem like he
is. (TV sounds, then door opens…and TV
clicks off)

Андрюша!
Ты смотрел телевизор?

He
says…Нет, Папа. Книгу читал.

So
how would you translate: Ты смотрел
телевизор?

Were
you watching television?

Which
form is that? Perfective or imperfective? The question was all about
the process….about what Andrusha was doing. So it’s…imperfective.

Compare
that with this situation: I know my sister has been sitting in her
room for over three hours. I hear this music, and her gentle
weeping…then she comes out and explains…

Я
только что посмотрела <ТИТАНИК>.

I
just watched Titanic.

Here,
it’s clear she watched the whole thing. By choosing the perfective
form, she’s emphasizing the result. In English we’d say, “Wow, I
just watched Titanic.”

On
his birthday, Alex comes home just as his wife pulls a dessert from
the oven. Can you translate their exchange?

So
he said…”Wow, crème brulee?” And she said…”Yes. I
read the recipe in the magazine Cosmopolitan.”

So
we say recipe and in Russian it’s: рецепт.
And we say magazine or journal, and Russian pronounces
it: журнал

But
the real question is: Which verb aspect did she use? Listen again…

прочитала
is the perfective. She used that because she read the recipe,
the entire thing,obviously, in the journal.

<<TIP
OF THE DAY…>>

Do
you know how to use Google’s “exact match” function? If you
put a search term in quotes, you’ll get results with that exact
phrase. For fun, I just searched for exact matches of the Russian
phrases “прочитала рецепт”…
And читала рецепт.

Remember,
the difference is that читала translates
as was reading. I searched because, you gotta figure прочитала
would far outweigh читала. Right?
I mean, how often would you say, I was reading a recipe in a
magazine…versus, I read the recipe in a magazine. Sure
enough…прочитала рецепт got
over 20,000 matches…and читала a
mere five thousand. Curious on how they used it, I read some of the
results that contained читала. Here
are two. Listen…?

Я
долго читала рецепт и список ингредиентов

I,
for a long time, was reading the recipe and the list of ingredients.
The writer used читала because she’s
emphasizing the process..she was reading it for a long time. This
next phrase also stood out…

Пока
я читала рецепт, залила клавиатуру
слюной.

Пока
which we think of as a friendly ‘Goodbye’ in Russian,
literally translates as “for the time being” or “while.”
So she said: “While I was reading the recipe, I drooled on the
keyboard.”

She
had to use the imperfective читала…had
to use it…because she was saying what happened during that process.</p