John Martin
Is this correct? Verb tenses and Aspect John reads the book.......................Джон читает книгу. John is reading the book................Джон читает книгу. John is reading as I enter...............Джон читает, когда я вхожу. John read the book. Джон читал книгу. John was reading when I entered. Джон читал, когда я вошел. John will read the book. Джон прочитает книгу. John will be reading the book. Джон будет читать книгу. John will be reading when I enter. Джон будет читать, когда я войду. John read that book yesterday; while he was reading it, I entered. Джон прочитал эту книгу вчера; пока он его читал, я вошел. John read that book yesterday; while he was reading it, the postman came. wrong:Джон прочитал эту книгу вчера; пока он его читал, почтальон пришел. corrected:Джон прочитал эту книгу вчера; пока он её читал, почтальон пришел.
Sep 3, 2018 2:49 PM
Answers · 7
It's a very misleading idea to think of an Aspect as a Tense and try corresponding English tenses to Russian Aspect. Aspect is a completely different grammatical category than a Tense. John will read the book. ------ could be both Джон прочитает книгу./ or Джон будет читать книгу. John read that book yesterday ------could be both Джон читал книгу вчера /or Джон прочитал книгу вчера. Guys, it's also incorrect to explain the idea of Perfective as a Completed Action.
September 4, 2018
I appreciate all the comments. They were instructive and covered more than I was trying to understand here. This was a very simple "attempt" to illustrate to myself a very simple concept - limiting verb changes to simple sentence structures. In doing so, I totally overlooked the gender of книга accidentally.
September 4, 2018
Agree with Anya. Like in English there can be different translations into Russian according to the context. And past imperfective "Джон читал книгу" may correspond to present perfect 'John has read the book'. Technically there are no mistakes except the gender of the noun "книга", but I think it would be more useful to translate within the context.
September 4, 2018
Yes John, you're absolutely right.
September 3, 2018
Да, всё абсолютно верно.
September 3, 2018
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John Martin
Language Skills
English, German, Russian
Learning Language
Russian
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