The past tense

After this page you will be able to form the past tense of most Ukrainian verbs from the infinitive. You will know why the past tense changes for gender and number but not for person, and where to put the stress. At the end there is a short first look at verb aspect.

One past tense

Everyday Ukrainian uses one past tense. One form covers what English splits into several. As a rough comparison only: чита́в can correspond to English read, was reading or has read, and the context decides.

The good news is that the past tense has only four endings to learn, not six. The less familiar part is what those endings show: the gender and number of the subject, not the person.

How to form it

Start from the infinitive, the dictionary form ending in -ти. Take off -ти to get the stem. Then add one of four endings:

• -в for a masculine singular subject;
• -ла for a feminine singular subject;
• -ло for a neuter singular subject;
• -ли for any plural subject.

This pattern covers most verbs whose infinitive has a vowel before -ти. Notice that you build the past tense from the infinitive, not from the present tense. Писа́ти has the present-tense form пишу́ (I write), but its past tense is regular: писа́в, писа́ла.

Agreement: gender and number, not person

In the present tense the verb ending shows the person: I, you, he, and so on. In the past tense it does not. Instead the verb agrees with the subject in gender (in the singular) and number, the way an adjective does.

Three things follow from this.

• With я and ти, the form depends on who is meant. A man says я чита́в; a woman says я чита́ла. When you speak to someone as ти, choose the form for that person.
• The plural has one form for all genders. Чита́ли is used for we, you (plural) and they, whoever they are.
• Formal ви always takes the plural form, even when you are speaking politely to one person.

Because the form does not show the person, the subject pronoun is usually kept in the past tense. Чита́в on its own could mean I read, you read or he read. Sentence structure explains when pronouns can be left out.

Where the stress falls

Usually where it is in the infinitive

For most verbs the stress stays on the same syllable as in the infinitive, in all four forms: чита́ти → чита́в, чита́ла, чита́ли; говори́ти → говори́в, говори́ла, говори́ли. All the verbs in the first table work like this.

Some short verbs move the stress to the ending

In a few common short verbs, the stress moves to the ending in the feminine, neuter and plural forms.

This is not a rule you can apply to every short verb. Спа́ти (to sleep) looks similar, but keeps the stress on the stem: спав, спа́ла, спа́ли. When you learn a short verb, learn its feminine past form too, and check the stress in a dictionary.

Verbs with a different masculine form

A smaller group of verbs has a stem that ends in a consonant, or an irregular stem. In the masculine they have no -в, and the vowel of the stem may change. The other forms add -ла, -ло and -ли as usual. In the three verbs below the stress is on the ending, but this is not true of every such verb.

Іти́ also has the form йти, with the past forms йшов, йшла, йшли. Treat these verbs as items to learn one by one.

Reflexive verbs

Verbs with -ся at the end (reflexive verbs) form the past tense in the same way and keep -ся at the very end: вчи́тися (to study, to learn) → вчи́вся, вчи́лася, вчи́лося, вчи́лися.

A first look at aspect

Most Ukrainian verbs come in pairs. One verb of the pair, the imperfective, presents an action as a process, or as something that happened repeatedly. The other, the perfective, presents it as completed, with a result. The perfective is often the same verb with a prefix: чита́ти and прочита́ти both mean “to read”. This difference is called aspect.

Both verbs of a pair form the past tense in exactly the same way. The difference is in the meaning.

For now, it is enough to recognise that two verbs can share one English translation. The Горох dictionary marks each verb as imperfective (недоко́наний вид) or perfective (доко́наний вид). See Aspect for the full picture.

Common mistakes and limits