Aspect: A Matter of Perspective

Let's look at something that doesn't always get much attention in beginning Russian: the importance of the speaker's perspective in choosing which aspect to use.

Though we often think of using the perfective for one-time actions, there are times when you'll hear the imperfective for something that happened just once – and it's quite common in everyday Russian! This is where the speaker's point of view in a given context is important. In this video we'll talk about several contexts to distinguish whether just we're stating whether something happened (or not), as opposed to providing detail or considering the result of an action.

This video was inspired in part by the approach taken in Живая речь, textbooks by Ирина Андреева, Елена Арсенова, and Кирилл Микитьянц, published by Lingua-Vita (https://www.lingua-vita.com). The focus on aspect is found in Volume A1+.

Видео Aspect: A Matter of Perspective канала Russian grammar