Verbal aspect
To understand the concept of verbal aspect, it’s helpful to think of two different ways of capturing a given moment on camera:
- 📷 with a photograph
- 🎥 with video
A photograph captures a specific event at a specific moment in time. A video captures a continuous action that occurs over a period of time.
Analogously, in Ukrainian there are two aspects that a given verb may have:
- perfect
- imperfect
More precisely, we typically say that every verb in the Ukrainian language falls into one of these two categories.
| Perfect Verbs | Imperfect Verbs |
|---|---|
| позвати (to call) | звати (to call) |
| написати (to write) | писати (to write) |
| навчити (to teach) | навчати (to teach) |
Perfect verbs are verbs that are used to describe completed actions. You can think of these as specific actions that happened at a specific moment in time (actions that can be expressed with a photograph). Imperfect verbs are verbs used to describe continuous actions or habitual actions (i.e. actions that can be expressed via video).
If you have studied French or Spanish, you will have encountered the perfect and imperfect aspects in the preterite tense and the imperfect tense.
Verbal aspect
To understand the concept of verbal aspect, its helpful to think of two different ways of capturing a given moment on camera:
- 📷 with a photograph
- 🎥 with video
A photograph captures a specific event at a specific moment in time. A video captures a continuous action that occurs over a period of time.
Analogously, in Ukrainian there are two aspects that a given verb may have:
- perfect
- imperfect
More precisely, we typically say that every verb in the Ukrainian language falls into one of these two categories.
| Perfect Verbs | Imperfect Verbs |
|---|---|
| pozvaty (to call) | zvaty (to call) |
| napysaty (to write) | pysaty (to write) |
| navchyty (to teach) | navchaty (to teach) |
Perfect verbs are verbs that are used to describe completed actions. You can think of these as specific actions that happened at a specific moment in time (actions that can be expressed with a photograph). Imperfect verbs are verbs used to describe continuous actions or habitual actions (i.e. actions that can be expressed via video).
If you have studied French or Spanish, you will have encountered the perfect and imperfect aspects in the preterite tense and the imperfect tense.