| Past | Present | Future |
| First Conjugation | Second Conjugation |
| Introduction |
Welcome to part two of this little series on Russian verb conjugation. If you missed part one, click here. If not, let’s get right to it!
Fair warning, verbs of this group are a little more complex.
| Formation |
| Verbs from this conjugation group end in –ить [very common], –еть and even –ать. |
| Second-Conjugation Endings |
| я | ты | он|она|оно | мы | вы | они |
| –ю | –ишь | –ит | –им | –ите | –ят |
I would say you typically remove the infinitive ending –ить, –еть, –ать, as with first-conjugation verbs, then add in the proper endings. However, that doesn’t always work with second-conjugation verbs.
In most instances, you remove –ить, –еть, –ать therefore, to facilitate the conjugation of these verbs, we’re only going to focus on those sharing the pattern below.
…
We’ll use the verb говорить [to speak, to talk, to say] as our example. To conjugate it, remove the ending –ить, leaving you with the stem говор-. Having found the stem, add in the endings listed above. It’s that easy!
| говорить [to speak, to talk, to say] |
| говорю | говорим |
| говоришь | говорите |
| говорит | говорят |
Some in-context examples:
| Ты говоришь и говоришь, а я всё ещё не слушаю. You talk and talk, yet I don’t listen. |
| Мне интересно, как Вы говорите по-русски? I wonder how you speak Russian. |
| На каком языке говорят в Канаде? What language do they speak in Canada? |
Additional verbs following this pattern are:
| хранить | to keep |
| верить | to believe |
| ценить | to appreciate |
| слышать | to hear |
| смотреть | to watch |
| дышать | to breathe |
| молчать | to be quiet |
| учить | to study, to learn |
| варить | to boil |
| Я смотрю по телевизору новости и сериалы. I watch the news and series on TV. |
| Она ценит людей всех слоёв общества. She values people of all backgrounds. |
| Вы учите новые русские слова? Are you learning new Russian words? |
| Some bad news. Sadly, there are many, many irregular stems and patterns that you’ll run into when conjugating verbs from this group. |
| Beware of stress shifts. Verbs in this group don’t have a fixed stress in their conjugation like what you saw with the first group. |
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That’s all for this verb post. We’ll be continuing our journey of Russian verbs in later posts.
| Last Edit: 01/21/2026. |
My Slavic Studies 