Quote Originally Posted by ShakeyX View Post
All these explanations sit well in my mind (make sense to me) so I'm becomming happier :P This has been something that has fried my brains for years.

So in your example with "Я писал письмо два часа, когда он пришел" are we saying that with the added context it denotes "I had been writing when..." whereas if you remove that it would more accurately translate to "I have been writing..." and it is only context (and additional words) which distinguish between the english "present perfect" and "past perfect"?

(I guess the fact time is involved is why we use had/have been rather than just "was", to indicate the progressive nature [jesus christ i've began questioning how it is in english now])

Someone give me a tick on that and I can sleep well tonight.

What confuses the hell out of me is this example on russianforeveryone. Up until this point I genuinely understand everything you've been saying, I can often identify if something is imperfective/perfective in english regardless of the construction so I feel i'm getting the hang of it, however this example just seems odd to me:

- Алло!
- Привет, Таня! Это Сергей!
- Привет, Серёжа!
- Что ты сейчас делаешь?
- Читаю интересную немецкую статью по истории.
- А что ты будешь делать, когда прочитаешь эту статью?
- Когда я её прочитаю, буду писать письмо моей немецкой подруге.
- А что ты будешь делать, когда напишешь письмо?
- Когда напишу, буду смотреть телевизор. Сегодя вечером новый фильм Михалкова "Восток - Запад". А что ты делаешь?
- Сейчас я смотрю футбол, а вечером буду писать курсовую работу. Кстати, Восток - Запад я уже посмотрел.
- А когда ты его смотрел?
- Полгода назад в кинотеатре.

Is it just me or does it seem weird... What will you be doing when you've read the article? fine, but then "when i have read (will have read) I will be writing a letter... denoting a sort of strange sense that the person doesn't think they will complete it, or they do not have that intention? Then straight after they refer to writing in the perfect indicating it was an action to be completed and put out the way, like a list. I dont get this hoping between imperfective and perfective.

Last point:посмотрел, as stated just now, I would have 100% expected смотрел as I believe this is the "experiential perfect". He once watched it, it is part of his life, however it is not recent and having just happened.

Thanks, Jake
Well, sometimes perfective/imperfective forms can be replaced with one another with absolutely no logic behind it. However, it gives the sentence a slightly different shade of meaning. While another time, it significantly changes the meaning. Bringing in your examples,

1. Когда я её прочитаю, "буду писать/напишу" письмо моей немецкой подруге. - I'll write my German friend a letter as I'm done with my reading. Here, any of the two options is valid, but they make a subtle difference in the meaning, which you can't really explain logically, but which you can feel once you have your language skills at a certain level.

2. А что ты будешь делать, когда напишешь письмо? - And what are you going to do as you're done with the letter?
Compare this one vs. "А что ты будешь делать, когда будешь писать письмо?" ~ What are you going to do while writing the letter?

So here, the difference is crucial, and you can apply logic that will help you pick the one you actually mean to say.

3. Сейчас я смотрю футбол, а вечером буду писать курсовую работу. Кстати, Восток - Запад я уже смотрел/посмотрел. - Now I'm watching a soccer game, and I'll do my term project in the evening. Btw, I've already seen the Восток - Запад movie.

Again, the two options are totally interchangeable, and the difference in the meaning is really minor.

The difficulty of learning a language is that you don't have logic or a pattern that will always work, and you end up having to just "feel" the language anyway. But the good news is, after some time of deep immersion, you usually begin to feel it. =))