Essential Russian Verbs presents some of the most frequent and practical verbs based on data from the Russian National Corpus. The book includes fifteen pairs of verbs essential for everyday communication. Each verb pair is numbered and arranged on a two-page layout, with the imperfective aspect shown in a blue table and its perfective equivalent shown in a red table.

What's Inside

Verb forms in the tables include accent marks, while the example sentences do not. Learners are encouraged to listen to the accompanying audio and mark stressed syllables in the example sentences as an additional exercise to reinforce pronunciation and stress patterns.

Example sentences appear beside the tables. Beneath the tables, you’ll find collocations and idioms, proverbs and expressions, synonyms, and derivative verbs. These make use of the space under each table and may not correspond directly to the imperfective or perfective aspect of the verbs featured on that page. The synonyms are verbs that can be used in certain contexts or meanings instead of the featured verb, while the derivative verbs are those formed by adding prefixes that modify the original meanings.

Audio Component

On the audio tracks, you’ll hear the past tense forms preceded by он, она, оно, and они. This is intended to illustrate the gender and number of the forms. Naturally, past tense verbs in Russian can also appear with other pronouns or nouns in context.