Thread: Разные вопросы по глаголам (by Simon000001

Привет,

Какая разница между глаголами платить, оплатить, уплатить и заплатить ?

Спасиьо

Originally Posted by Simon000001

Привет,

Какая разница между глаголами платить, оплатить, уплатить и заплатить ?

Спасиьо

Semantically, all of them mean the same (they convey the idea of paying).
Syntaxically and morphologically, they differ.

"платить" and "заплатить" is just a pair of "imperfective/perfective" verbs:
Он платит мне деньги за работу. - He pays me money for my work (or: He is paying ...) - present.
Он заплатит мне деньги за работу. - He will pay me money for my work - future.

If you are familiar with the concept of the Russian aspect, I think you will get what I mean.

How to use "платить/заплатить":
Платить кому (Dative - to whom?) что (Accusative, e.g.: деньги, сто рублей etc.) за что (Accusative - for what?), see examples above.
Any of the 3 nouns can be omitted:
Он платит мне деньги. Он платит мне за работу. Он платит деньги за работу. Он платит мне. Он платит деньги. Он платит за работу. - All the sentences are OK.

"уплатить" is more specific. It always requires (or assumes) an amounnt to be paid:
Вы должны уплатить сто рублей за оформление документов.
The sentence means exactly the same as "Вы должны заплатить сто рублей за оформление документов.", but the former sounds more officially, I'd say the difference is merely stylistic.

"уплатить" is always perfective (as "заплатить").

"оплатить" (perf.) / "оплачивать" (imperf.) has the same meaning as "заплатить" (perf.) / "платить" (imperf.), but it displays a different case/preposition government:
Оплатить что (Accusative - for what?)

Example:
Заплатить за работу = Оплатить работу (when "оплатить" is used, the object of payment becomes the direct object of the verb, as you see). It is impossible to use "оплатить" with any indication of the amount of money being paid.

Some more complicated examples:
Он заплатил профессору много денег за обучение. = Он оплатил обучение. Обучение оплачено. (Education is paid)
Он заплатил мне 100 рублей за перевод текста. = Он оплатил перевод текста. Перевод текста оплачен. (Text translation is paid)

Note 1.
Он заплатил профессору много денег за обучение. - When converting this phrase to "оплатить", you cannot indicate neither the amount of money (много денег), nor the recipient (профессору). You only indicate that the education is paid (a fact): Он оплатил обучение.
If you even say "Он оплатил профессору обучение", it would not mean that "he paid professor for education"! It would rather mean that "he paid professor's education" (imagine: the professor was taking some additional education in a university, and someone paid the bill issued to the professor by the university, because the professor could not afford paying it by himself).

Note 2.
It is a very typical speech mistake many Russian people do They sometimes confuse "заплатить" and "оплатить" and use the latter verb incorrectly. For example, you often can here in a Russian bus: "Оплатите за проезд!", which is incorrect
The correct versions are:
1) Оплатите проезд!
or 2) Заплатите за проезд!