Verb aspect is something that, for some, might be the hardest part of grammar to learn.

Slavic languages have an “aspect distinction” when it comes to verbs. Aspect is the category of verbs, not a form or a tense of verbs. 

There are two verb aspects: 

• imperfective
• perfective

Although their names are somewhat similar to the some known verb tenses, they have nothing to do with tenses, they are simply a property of verbs. 

Since Russian only has 3 tenses (Present, Past, Future), it needed more ways to express different nuances, such as something that happens repetitively or something that happens punctually.

Its consequence is that every verb in English has (at least) 2 corresponding verbs in Russian, one of each aspect. Let’s look at some example sentences in English:

I was cooking lunch when you arrived.
I cooked lunch and then ate it.

In the first sentence, you’re expressing an action that lasted for some time in the past, and you emphasize the duration of the action.  – I was cooking lunch. 

In the second sentence, you are simply stating the fact that you have cooked lunch, an action that is finished in the past, it expresses a result of an action. – I cooked lunch. 

If we were to translate these sentences into Russian, we would use both aspects of the verb “to cook” – готовить (imperfective) and приготовить (perfective):

Я готовил обед, когда ты пришел.→ imperfective
[I] [was-cooking-masc.] [lunch], [when] [you] [arrived-masc.].
I was cooking lunch when you arrived. 

Я приготовил обед, а потом съел его. → perfective
[I] [cooked-masc.] [lunch], [and] [then] [ate-masc.] [it].
I cooked lunch and then ate it.

That’s why it’s always a good ideia to learn verbs in pairs – always the imperfective and the perfective forms at the same time.

The downside is that there’s no specific rule on how to form the perfective verb. In some cases, you simply add a prefix to the imperfective verb (like we’ve just seen with “готовить → приготовить”), but there are several prefixes to choose from and not all can be used in every verb. There are also irregular verbs that don’t follow this pattern. 

Here are some examples of verbs in the imperfective and in the perfective, and the prefixes used to form the perfective forms:

• Я писал письмо. – Я написал письмо.
  I was writing a letter. – I wrote a letter.
• Я бежал к финишу. – Я побежал к финишу.
  I was running to the finish line. – I ran to the finish line.
• Я смотрел фильм. – Я посмотрел фильм.
  I was watching a movie. – I watched (finished watching) a movie.
• Она читала книгу. – Она прочитала книгу.
  She was reading the book. – She read (finished reading) the book.
• Она сушила волосы. – Она высушила волосы.
  She was drying her hair. – She dried her hair. 

There are verbs that do not add a prefix but change the their middle part, or just change completely:

• снимать – снять (to record)
• бросать – бросить (to throw)
• класть – положить (to put)
• возвращаться – вернуться (to go/come back – the “ся” at the end means that it’s a reflexive verb)

Another important thing to mention is that in the Present tense only the Imperfective verbs are used. 

However, in the Past tense, you can use both. The way to conjugate them is the same (just like we saw above), but the difference is that:

Imperfective form

In most cases, it will refer to a process, something that happens over some time and you’re focusing on it; or also to sometimes that happens often, repetitively. Let’s use the imperfective verb “писать” (to write) as an example:

• Я писал письмо, когда он пришёл. (I was writing a letter when he arrived. – process)
• Каждый месяц я писалa ему два письма. (Every month I used to write him two letters. – repetitive action)

Perfective form

In most cases, it will refer to a punctual fact, something that happened once and is finished. Let’s use the perfective verb “написать” (to write) as an example:

• Я написал ему письмо. (I wrote him a letter. – punctual action)
• Она написала книгу. (She wrote a book. – finished action)

As you can see, this is quite a difficult aspect of the Russian language to grasp. These are some general rules for making the perfective and imperfective verbs but, as you can see, the best way to learn these is simply by learning them in pairs.

With this in mind, we can talk about the Future tense.