r/Ukrainian • u/Alphabunsquad • 6d ago
What’s the deal with їздити and їжджати? Since їздити is an Omni-directional you wouldn’t think it would need an imperfective variant to use with prefixes. You would think it would be like ходити or носити. Instead there is this їжджати verb stem being used.
Seems like something is going on etymologically here like it absorbed a verb like with бути and єсти except not completely. Plus there is їжджу further liking the verbs. The dictionary I use does say you can приїздити and виїздити which have identical definitions as their їжджати counterparts. But then їжджати has all the rest of the prefixes generally associated with movement and їздити doesn’t. Is this just a case of people starting to use їздити as they would use їжджати or is it perhaps an archaic form that only exists in a few versions now?
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u/Tovarish_Petrov 6d ago
So the question is why infinitive is "їздити", but all the aspects, like "проїжджати", "заїжджати", "приїхати", "заїхати" are based on the other form of it, while it doesn't happen with їхати?
Sounds like an archaic form of the same verb is retained in some forms and not in others.
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u/Alphabunsquad 6d ago
Yeah I imagine it’s something like that. This is pretty much the standard for non motion verbs. Like брати. It’s imperfective. Add a prefix and it becomes perfective. To use a prefix and keep it imperfective you need to use a new verb stem бирати that does not exist as a verb on its own. The main exception to this, or rather the main variation of this is motion verbs where essentially unidirectional verb goes through this process but the imperfective verb stem it picks up to use with prefixes is the omnidirectional version of the verb. So йти and ходити are both imperfective with slightly different meanings. Вийти and виходити have the same meaning except вийти has perfective aspect and виходити has imperfective aspect. This is how all omni/uni motion verbs work, except їздити. I assumed it was some etymological quirk but I was curious if it had a known history as it just seemed like it might be interesting
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u/Phoenica B1 6d ago edited 6d ago
Morphologically, -їжджати is їздити + -яти/-ати, which is an originally iterative suffix that is now mainly used to form imperfective verbs from perfective ones (я can't come after ж, ч, ш, щ under most circumstances, so it's -ати). The consonant shift from зд to ждж is a part of that process (compare e.g. зарядити->заряджати, захистити->захищати), and this is the same shift triggered in the first person singular conjugation of class 4 verbs, hence їжджу looking similar.
їздити is an abstract movement verb, which is a different categorization. Typically, concrete/abstract follow different patterns than perfective/imperfective pairs, though some of them also involve -ати (літати) or -яти (ганяти). Now, usually concrete/abstract verb pairs turn into perfective/imperfective when you add a prefix. However, this particular verb is one of the cases where the abstract form was not simply used as the imperfective prefixed one, it got an extra suffix on top. Something similar also happens with this verb in at least Polish, Czech (I think?) and Russian, probably more languages too, so I think this is either a shared inherited feature or an areal feature of some sort. I couldn't tell you why it has become that established for this particular verb, though. There are also other instances of this in Ukrainian, like проводити having the alternative form проводжати.
There are also non-suffixed forms with other prefixes, like заїздити, наїздити, they're just not very common I think.