Thread: Not sure whether should be perfective or imperfective here. . .

If I were to translate the sentence "He was busy on Friday night, that's why he didn't read the article."

Would I still translate the verb "to read" as perfective, even though the action wasn't completed in the past because technically the action never actually took place?

Also, can I use the short form adjective занят in the past tense and if not how do you say "he was busy"

So to attempt to translate. . .

В пятницу вечером он занят, поэтому не прочитал статью.

There may be other solecisms present in my translation. Feel free to comment on those as well but I'm mainly concerned with the verb читать here. Thanks to anyone who helps out.

Originally Posted by lenssideways8

Also, can I use the short form adjective занят in the past tense and if not how do you say "he was busy"

You can.

	m. sg.	f. sg.	n. sg.	pl.
past	был за́нят	была́ занята́	бы́ло за́нято	бы́ли за́няты
present	за́нят	занята́	за́нято	за́няты
future	бу́дет за́нят	бу́дет занята́	бу́дет за́нято	бу́дут за́няты

Originally Posted by lenssideways8

Would I still translate the verb "to read" as perfective, even though the action wasn't completed in the past because technically the action never actually took place?

Both perfective and imperfective can be used with little or no difference in meaning.

В пя́тницу ве́чером он был за́нят, поэ́тому не прочита́л статью́.
or
В пя́тницу ве́чером он был за́нят, поэ́тому не чита́л статью́.

Originally Posted by lenssideways8

...Would I still translate the verb "to read" as perfective, even though the action wasn't completed in the past because technically the action never actually took place?...

You might be overthinking it here. Sure, the logic looks sound when it comes to choosing perfective over imperfective. The thing is the logic behind that sentence is not to question perfective or imperfective aspect of the action, but to show if the action was or was not taken. In other words the speaker does not care if the article was read fully or not, they only care if it was read at all at any capacity.

That's probably why, as noted by @Soft sign, you can use either aspect of the verb with little to no difference in meaning there.

Originally Posted by lenssideways8

...So to attempt to translate. . .

В пятницу вечером он занят, поэтому не прочитал статью.

Looks alright but you forgot to put занят in the past there. It should be "был занят", without был that part of the sentence refers to the future (even though it's technically in the present tense) and the clause is in the past. I'm sure you now see why it looks funny the way it is.

Actually, when you say ‘не прочитал’, it remains undefined if he started reading the article and just couldn’t finish it, or if he didn’t even start. So, technically, if you are trying to say that

Originally Posted by lenssideways8

the action wasn't completed in the past because technically the action never actually took place

then you must use ‘не читал’.

The reason why even the native speakers struggle to see the difference between 2 variants is because ‘статья’ is considered to be something pretty short, so the possibility that someone couldn’t read it up to the end once started is rather small, thus the difference between ‘прочитал’ and ‘читал’ is also small.

For example there is merely no difference between ‘Я читал это стихотворение’ and ‘Я прочитал это стихотворение’.

But

If you changed ‘статья’ to ‘книга’, the difference would become more obvious.
Actually ‘Он вчера был занят, поэтому не прочитал эту книгу’ sounds like he really did read this book yesterday, but just didn’t finish it. So if you want to say that he didn't do any reading, then you must say ‘Он вчера был занят, поэтому не читал эту книгу’

There’s also the word дочита́ть ‘read to the end’ (perfective).

«Он не дочита́л статью́» implies that he definitely started but hasn’t finished reading, while
«Он не прочита́л статью́» says nothing about whether he started.