The conjugation of Russian verbs put, take, and give

Russian verbs are one big mystery and sometimes even native speakers struggle to understand how Russian verbs work. But in this article, we'll try to solve the mystery of "put, take and give".

'Put' means 'класть' и 'положить' and if you wonder if there's any difference in meaning, the answer is simple – none. The only thing that we need to remember is that 'класть' is an imperfective verb and 'положить' is perfective. (Perfective and imperfective verbs need a separate article, but to put it shortly here we can say that

1. Perfective verbs are connected with one time actions, imperfective are connected with repeated actions
2. Perfective verbs are usually about the result and imperfective verbs are about the process

Let's conjugate this verb in Present:

Why did we conjugate only 'класть'? Because only imperfective verbs can be conjugated in Present Tense and it means that we need to do less work.

• Когда мы приходим домой, мы кладём вещи в шкаф.
• Я не люблю класть свою одежду на диван, я кладу её на кресло.

'Give' also has an imperfective (давать) and perfective form (дать).

• Дай мне тетрадь.
• Я дам тебе денег.

Не надо давать мне так много домашнего задания – дайте мне возможность поспать на выходных, я устал в университете. (You can try this phrase with your Russian professor)

You can't conjugate давать in Present Tense, you can only conjugate дать:

The last verb in our list is 'take' – 'брать' (imperfective) and 'взять' (perfective). If we talk about present tense, we can't conjugate взять (but we can use it in Present Tense in the combination with other verbs, e.g. Я хочу взять кофе в 'Теремке'), but we can conjugate брать.

• Я никогда не беру обед на работу, я обедаю в кафе.
• Кофе всего за сто рублей? Беру!

I hope that all these verbs make more sense now: я хочу дать вам совет – не откладывайте изучение русского языка, берите учебник прямо сейчас и практикуйтесь????


Online Russian lessons from 5 euro at the Enjoy Russian language school: Russian group course, Russian speaking club, Individual lessons