Learning Journal 9

[Taylor Johnson]

This week, my goal was to start familiarizing myself with verbal aspects in Ukrainian. This is the most difficult thing that I have done so far because there is really nothing similar in English, so it is hard to know exactly when to use which aspect form. There are two different aspects: perfective and imperfective. Each Ukrainian verb comes with a pair in the opposite aspect. I am familiar with aspect verbs because Russian uses them too, however, aspects have been the most challenging thing for me to get right in Russian as well. I did the practice questions in my textbook and still had some trouble with deciding when to use which aspect, but I am getting more right than I thought I would. When I was learning Russian, I thought that in real life, someone would understand what I needed if I used the wrong aspect of a verb, however I learned this summer that that is really not the case. I am assuming that it is the same in Ukrainian, so I really want to try to gain a better understanding of Ukrainian aspect verbs before I move there next year.