Russian grammar · verbs
Russian verb conjugation, explained
Russian verbs look scary and are actually merciful: three tenses, two regular patterns, and a past tense that ignores person entirely. What actually needs your attention is aspect and stress. This guide covers all of it with real tables, every form stress-marked.
Aurélien CuvelierSep 2, 2026The two conjugation classes
Every regular verb follows one of two sets of present-tense endings. Learn the two rows once and you can conjugate most of the language.
The first conjugation (most verbs in -ать, -ять, -еть) uses е-endings: читать becomes читаешь, читает, читаем. The second conjugation (most verbs in -ить, plus a short list of exceptions) uses и-endings: говорить becomes говоришь, говорит, говорим.
Here are the two ending rows side by side, then both patterns on real verbs. These tables come from the same dictionary that powers our flashcards, every form stress-marked.
The endings
| я | ты | он / она | мы | вы | они | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st conjugation | -ю / -у | -ешь | -ет | -ем | -ете | -ют / -ут |
| 2nd conjugation | -ю / -у | -ишь | -ит | -им | -ите | -ят / -ат |
The two patterns on real verbs
читать (to read) follows the first conjugation, говорить (to speak) the second. Tap either verb anywhere on this site to open its full card.
| я / мы | читаю | читаем |
| ты / вы | читаешь | читаете |
| он / она / они | читает | читают |
| я / мы | говорю | говорим |
| ты / вы | говоришь | говорите |
| он / она / они | говорит | говорят |
How do you tell which class a verb belongs to? The infinitive is a strong hint (-ить almost always means second conjugation) but not a proof: жить takes е-endings, and famous exceptions like видеть and слышать take и-endings despite -еть/-ать. The reliable habit is the one our cards teach: learn each verb with its ты-form, because -ешь or -ишь settles the class instantly.
The past tense: gender, not person
The Russian past tense is the easiest in Europe. It does not care who acts, only about grammatical gender and number.
Take the infinitive, drop -ть, add -л. Then agree with the subject: -ла for feminine, -ло for neuter, -ли for any plural. Four forms, no exceptions worth fearing, and they are the same whether the subject is я, ты or они.
So я делал means a man says it, я делала means a woman says it, and мы делали covers everyone. That is the entire system.
| masculine | делал |
| feminine | делала |
| neuter | делало |
| plural | делали |
The future: one tense, two roads
Which future you use depends on aspect, and this is where Russian conjugation actually gets interesting.
Imperfective future: буду + infinitive
For a process or a habit in the future, conjugate быть and leave the verb alone: я буду читать, ты будешь читать. Nothing else changes.
буду, будешь, будет, будем, будете, будут
Perfective future: present endings, future meaning
A perfective verb has no present tense at all, so its present-looking forms mean the future: я прочитаю is "I will read (to the end)". Same two conjugation classes, same endings, future meaning. This is why the aspect section below is really part of conjugation.
Aspect: every verb comes as a pair
Russian verbs travel in imperfective/perfective pairs, and choosing between them matters more than any ending.
The imperfective half (читать) names the process or the habit: was reading, reads, used to read. The perfective half (прочитать) names the completed result: read to the end, once. Tense machinery follows from that split: only the imperfective has a present tense, and each half builds its future differently, as above.
Our dictionary treats the pair as one unit: every verb card links its partner, and both halves are always carded together. A few classic pairs to see the pattern:
The true irregulars: a short list
Russian has far fewer genuinely irregular verbs than French or English. Four are worth memorizing outright.
хотеть (to want) is the famous "mixed" verb: singular forms take first-conjugation endings with a ч mutation, plural forms jump to the second conjugation. дать (to give) and есть (to eat) keep archaic endings no other verbs use. бежать (to run) mixes и-endings with a г/ж alternation. Beyond these and their prefixed children, what looks irregular is usually just a stress shift or a regular consonant mutation (пишу from писать).
Stress: the real difficulty
Endings are learnable in an afternoon. What Russian actually tests is where the stress sits, because it can move inside one verb's own table.
Every Russian verb has one of three stress patterns: fixed on the stem (делать: делаю, делаешь), fixed on the ending (говорить: говорю, говоришь), or shifting, where the я-form stresses the ending and every other form retreats to the stem (писать: пишу, пишешь, пишет). Dictionaries rarely show this; ours marks the stressed vowel on every single form, because a misplaced stress is what makes you hard to understand.
The tables above already show it: compare the stable stress of делать with the retreat in писать. When you learn a verb here, the pattern comes with the card.
Conjugation tables for the most common verbs
Every entry opens the full page: stressed conjugation in every tense, participles, the aspect partner, and real annotated sentences.
- бытьto be
- мочьto be able to, can
- сказатьto say, to tell
- говоритьto speak
- знатьto know
- статьto become, turn into, come to be
- хотетьto want
- идтиto go, walk
- иметьhave, possess
- видетьto see, perceive with the eyes
- думатьthink about, have on one's mind
- сделатьto do, accomplish, get done
- житьto live, reside, dwell
- делатьto do
- смотретьwatch, look at
- работатьto work, be employed
- понятьto understand, grasp the meaning of something
- пойтиgo, set off
- спроситьto ask, to put a question
- датьto give, hand over
- пониматьto understand
- получитьto receive, get, obtain
- сидетьto sit, be seated
- оказатьсяto turn out to be, to prove to be
The special case: verbs of motion
Fourteen verb pairs (идти/ходить, ехать/ездить...) add a second split on top of aspect: one verb for a single trip in progress, another for habits and round trips. They deserve their own page, and NuanceDeck ships the only dedicated drill for them.
Questions
How many tenses does Russian have?
Three: past, present and future. The catch is aspect, not tense count: perfective verbs skip the present, and the future is built one way for imperfective verbs (буду + infinitive) and another for perfective ones (present-style endings with future meaning).
How do I know if a verb is first or second conjugation?
The infinitive is a hint: -ить almost always means second conjugation, most other endings mean first. But exceptions exist in both directions, so the reliable way is to learn each verb with its ты-form: -ешь settles it as first, -ишь as second. That is how our cards present every verb.
Does Russian have many irregular verbs?
Genuinely irregular: only a handful, chiefly хотеть, дать, есть and бежать, plus their prefixed derivatives. Most verbs that look irregular are following regular consonant mutations or one of the three stress patterns, which is why stress-marked tables matter more than irregularity lists.
What is the hardest part of Russian conjugation?
Not the endings. The two real difficulties are choosing the aspect (was the action a process or a completed result?) and placing the stress, which can move between forms of the same verb. Both are properties you learn per verb, which is exactly what spaced-repetition flashcards are good at.
Learn verbs with their conjugation attached
Every NuanceDeck verb card carries its full stressed table, its aspect partner and real sentences, and the review scheduler brings it back exactly when you would forget it.
Written by
Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck
Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck: the app, and the verification pipeline behind its dictionary. Every entry is grounded in the official TORFL lexical minimum and a 20,000-word frequency corpus, and every example sentence passes a certification review before it ships.
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