I’m gonna talk about the Russian language again, because none of you speak it and thus none of you can correct me when I’m wrong.

Today’s lesson is on the Russian equivalent of the English verb “to go.” While we have lots of different verbs of motion in English (to drive, to fly, etc.), we also have a generic catch-all verb in “to go.” Regardless of means of transport, time, or frequency, we can use “to go.” It’s a bit harder than that in Russian.

While Russian has verbs that match a lot of our specific verbs of motion, there’s no easy way to translate “to go.” That’s because Russian has four different verbs that fill that role: идти, ходить, ехать, and ездить (pronounced idtee, khadeet, yekhaht, yezdeet). Unfortunately for those trying to learn Russian, you can’t just use any of these verbs whenever you feel like. Идти and ходить both refer to going someplace on foot, but their usage differs based on a number of factors. If your trip is already in progress or it’s in the near future, you use идти. If you’re talking about how often you go somewhere (even if that frequency is never or always), or if you’re talking about taking a round-trip or completed journey somewhere, you use ходить. Ехать and ездить refer to going somewhere by vehicle, and the difference between the two is the same as the difference between идти and ходить.

Things get more complicated when you add a prefix to these four verbs of motion; for instance, the prefix про-, which changes the meaning of the verbs into going past something. The prefix also changes those pairs of verbs into a perfective/imperfective pair; проходить is present imperfective (going past), while пройти is future perfective (will go past). That pair can then also be put into the past tense, yielding проходил (he was going past) and прошёл (he went past).

In short, if you’re learning Russian, just never go anywhere. You’ll save yourself a headache.

See you all at practice,

Lev “Bublichki” Bernstein