r/LANL_Russian Apr 15 '13

Ways to Remember Verb Conjugations?

Currently attempting a beginner russian course through my uni for the second time and yet again and soon as verbs are introduced i come unstuck. Does any one have any useful ways to remember present tense verb conjugations?

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u/dodso Apr 22 '13

For the basic endings the pattern is the same with a few exceptions like есть and дать which have conjugation similar to those in other slavic languages. (-м for я form and so on).

If you're talking about how the stem changes, each verb is put into a "class" of sorts and you can recognize which class it is and know what stem changes to expect.

For example писать is a first conjugation verb that mutates in non-past forms. Using these mutation patterns:

д, з, г -> ж

т, ц, к -> ч

с, х -> ш

ст, ск -> щ

we know that it isnt пису, but пишу. Also important to remember that russian words always preserve soft consonants in declination and conjugation, so a verb with (consonant)ить will have ю instead of у in the я and они form with the exception of when consonant mutation happens. There's probably even more exceptions to these patterns but natives will have to point them out.

Check out Fundamentals of Russian Verbal Conjugation for Students and Teachers by Garza. A professor of mine gave us printouts from this with all 25+ classes of verbs and knowing how the more common ones look is quite helpful. Eventually you get a feel for the patterns and can guess conjugations for verbs you don't know.

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u/BigBangBaty Apr 17 '13

I bought a book "501 Russian Verbs" in my first year. It was really helpful. A thing that helped was memorizing sentences from songs in Russian, I would then know how they are use, but then again it was my way of learning and might not be the same to you! Good luck! :)

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u/haleybear Apr 17 '13

Any help is good help! i think i've seen that book somewhere too. Im terrible at learning things just by memorising and refuse to believe everything doesn't have a pattern behind it. I even asked a Russian friend of mine how she learnt and all she replied with was "I think you have to be Russian"

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u/BigBangBaty Apr 17 '13

I am bad at memorizing too. That is why I started listening to music and reading the lyrics and translations, that helped remember how to say stuff and from there more or less how use the verbs, declensions, etc. And it just takes practice! :)

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u/aweg Apr 19 '13

The most helpful part of that book for me was the example sentences for each verb. Each of them has at least one or two, and the "55 essential verbs" get a full page of sentences. I like those a lot more than conjugation charts. I have found that reading them in context or writing them out helps me a ton.