Thread: Beginning to compose my own sentences

Originally Posted by Eugene-p

kgcole, please, accompany your sentences with their equivalents in English, this will help us understand you better and if we see a mistake, we won't have to guess what it was supposed to mean, we can correct you right away in order to help you put your thoughts across in Russian.

Sure thing Eugene. Here's what I was trying to say:

"Thanks Eugene...lots of things to learn, though that's excellent (fine)."

Originally Posted by kgcole

"Thanks Eugene...lots of things to learn, though that's excellent (fine)."

Один из вариантов.
"Спасибо, Евгений. Мне нужно многое выучить, но все равно это замечательно."

Originally Posted by Doomer

Один из вариантов.
"Спасибо, Евгений. Мне нужно многое выучить, но все равно это замечательно."

You're right, "выучить" is the right word. But what if I consider learning as an unfinished process? Wouldn't I need the imperfective "учить"?

Originally Posted by kgcole

You're right, "выучить" is the right word. But what if I consider learning as an unfinished process? Wouldn't I need the imperfective "учить"?

выучить still works in the context
Because you trying to выучить many(some) things not ALL things, so even if you learn those many things you still have a long way to go until you done learning
учить however implies to the process and does not guarantee results, so it would sound that your goal is to try to learn some things but you don't care if you learn them or not

Originally Posted by Doomer

выучить still works in the context
Because you trying to выучить many(some) things not ALL things, so even if you learn those many things you still have a long way to go until you done learning
учить however implies to the process and does not guarantee results, so it would sound that your goal is to try to learn some things but you don't care if you learn them or not

That sounds like one of those nuances that can only be picked up from a native speaker. My textbook has good information in it, but not all information...lol. Discussing these things in writing helps me to remember it.

Back when I was a high-school Latin student, we had to memorize "the four principal parts" of every new verb. Just learning amare ("to love") wasn't enough information, but learning the four separate forms amo, amare, amavi, amatus allowed you (in theory) to deduce every single one of the verb's possible conjugational forms, in all tenses, active and passive, subjunctive and imperative, etc.

Russian is a bit simpler than Latin, but generally speaking, for most nouns and verbs there will be 2 to 4 "essential forms" that you need to memorize, not just one form.