Verbs Type I

Before I post the first verb, I thought I'd go into the theory a bit first...

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First of all, in Russian, verbs exist in 3 tenses: Past, Present, Future. We will start with the Present, the most difficult one!

• In their infinitive form(to go, to have, to give), most verbs end in -ить, although there are, of course exceptions, mostly -ти and -чь. But you'll see what I mean as we go along. There are, like always, some irregular ones, but we'll go through those individually. Let's first learn how to conjugate a perfectly normal verb - there are 2 'types' of regular verb! We'll start with the first type. This normally ends in -ать, -еть, or -ять

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Let's just start, shall we. As our first verb, let's just take Понима́ть

• You can see from the ending, ть, that this is in its infinitive form. It means "to understand"

• But that on it's own is quite useless. How do we say, for instance, I understand?

• First off, we get rid of the ть... as you can see - like always, we're going to mess with the ending :). So we're sitting there with понима-, which means nothing. But what do we add?

• To say I understand, you add 'ю'. Я понима́ю. Or, what's probably more likely at this point - я не понима́ю - I don't understand! :)

So, let me just give you the rest of the conjugation:

Кто?	Понимать
Я	понима́/ю
Ты	понима́/ешь
Он, Она́, Оно́	понима́ет
Мы	понима́/ем
Вы	понима́/ете
Они́	понима́/ют

Кто means "who" by the way

• So now you can go to Russia and tell people that you don't understand them - Wahey ;)

• Seriously though, these are the endings again:

-ю

-ешь

-ет

-ем

-ете

-ют

• The e's are sometimes ё's, when the stress falls on the end. But no worries... I mean no stress. hah.

This pattern works with most(not all - never all :D) verbs ending -ать, -еть, -ять - which, trust me, is a lot. You can now say quite a lot. Let's try another verb shall we?

• Знать - to know

• So, what do we do first? The end, remember? Mess with the end. So we'll take off the -ть and start adding our endings!

Кто?	Понимать
Я	Зна́/ю
Ты	Зна́/ешь
Он, Она́, Оно́	Зна́ет
Мы	Зна́/ем
Вы	Зна́/ете
Они́	Зна́/ют

So, now we know how to say 'we know'... Мы знаем, что Ива́н - студент. что(pronounced shto) in this case means 'that'... so 'we know, that Ivan is a student'. See? We can actually say things already - pretty cool.

Зна́ешь? is a very common phrase for people to colloquially add to the end of sentences.

Anyway, now we can start with our verbs!