Verbs in Russian Language - Part III (Future Tense and Past Tense)

Simple Future Tense

If you read the part about Present Tense and learned the rules for conjugating verbs, you'll have no problems with simple future tense.

If you want to express an action that is going to happen at a specific time in the future once and will be finished, you will use simple future tense. To correctly form the simple future tense, you will have to use a verb with perfective aspect and use conjugations for present tense. And that's it.

Compound Future Tense

If you want to express an action that will be happening repeatedly in the future, or when you are not sure or not concerned about the outcome of the action, you will use compound future tense.

It is very simple to form a compound future tense. You will use the future form of the verb to be and infinitive of imperfective verb. In the table below you can see the compound future for the verb ПИТЬ

Past Tense

Past tense is created from the stem of the verb. The verb is not conjugated, but there is a version for each gender and for plural. For masculine subject add -Л to the verb stem, for feminine subject add -ЛА, for neuter subject add -ЛО and for plural add -ЛИ.

If you want to express that the action occurred only once in the past, use the verb with perfective aspect. If you wish to express the continuous or repeating action in the past, use imperfective aspect.

For reflexive verbs, use the same rules and then add appropriate reflexive ending. In the table below see the past tense form for the verb УЛЫБАТЬСЯ.

If the modified part of the past tense form ends on a consonant (even if consonant if followed by the soft sign - Ь), add СЯ as ending. Else, if it ends on a vowel, add СЬ as ending.