Tenses

Learning how and when to use tenses can be an appropriate and effective method of demonstrating your language skills at an early stage. This area should help you to familiarise yourself with the Future and Past tense, with a short section explaining the subjunctive mood as well.

Past Tense

Watch the video below for a quick introduction to Verbs in Past Tense in Russian. Complete the questions within the video. Then, move onto the exercises, where you will need to read through the text carefully, identify the singular and plural past tense verbs respectively and mark them.

Exercises

Future Tense

In Russian, the future tense is applied in two distinct forms. Firstly, there is the simple future, which is formed by using the perfective aspect and a personal ending. For example: Она прочитает - which means "She will read" or "She will have read". There is also the compound future, which is formed with the use of the verb to be "Быть" in the future simple and the infinitive form of an imperfective verb. For example: Она будет читать - which means "She will read". Below are some clear examples.

Next up is an exercise for you to practice using the compound future.

Exercise

Subjunctive Mood in Russian

The subjunctive acts as a mood in Russian, where in other languages it is its own tense. In Russian it is used to talk about actions which have not yet occurred but have the potential of occurring. For example, in English: "I would love to move to France". It is formed with the use of "Бы" and the past tense verb conjugated in number. For example: "I would say that" - "Я бы сказал что". The verb to speak in the past tense is "сказать" so we form it in past tense, first person singular (I Form) and combine it with "Бы". More examples can be seen below: