Russian · Chapter 15 · Lesson 4 · Grammar primer

Imperative

Prescribed by the Edexcel specification - revisited.

The short version

Build the imperative from the oni form

Take the oni form and drop the ending. A vowel stem adds -y (delayut, delay), a consonant stem adds -i when the ya form is end-stressed (skazhu, skazhi) and a soft sign when it is not (zabudu, zabud). Add -te for vy: skazhite.

Skazhite, pozhaluysta, gde dom?

Excuse me, could you tell me where the house is?

Don't is imperfective; don't forget is not

A prohibition bans the whole activity, so negative commands are nearly always imperfective: ne govori, don't say it. The exception is a warning about an accident. Nobody forgets on purpose, so don't forget is the perfective ne zabud.

Ne zvoni mne.

Don't call me.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

Read the full article · 9 min read

Practice

Practise this lesson

10-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 18 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

Lesson 4 of 12 in this chapter

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