Die Vergangenheit

The past tense

The Belarusian past tense does not care who is speaking. It agrees with the subject in gender and number only, which means one verb has exactly four forms instead of six.

Я чытаў is said by a man, я чытала by a woman. The pronoun does not change; the verb does.

The -ў ending

This is the single most recognisable feature of a Belarusian text. Where other Slavic languages have a final -л, Belarusian has -ў, the letter у нескладовае ("short u"), pronounced like the w in English how: быў, пісаў, жыў, хадзіў. It appears only after a vowel, which is exactly where the masculine past ending sits.

Verbs that lose the ending entirely

A small group of common verbs has a bare masculine form with no ending at all, and the -л- reappears in the other three:

Aspect decides what the past means

Belarusian verbs come in pairs. The imperfective describes the activity, the perfective its completion, and both have the same set of past endings:

• Учора я чытаў кнігу. — Yesterday I was reading a book (the activity).
• Учора я прачытаў кнігу. — Yesterday I read the book (and finished it).

If your first language is English

English marks the past on the verb and leaves the subject alone; Belarusian does the reverse of what English speakers expect by making the verb agree with the subject's gender. There is also no separate perfect: Я быў у Мінску covers both "I was in Minsk" and "I have been to Minsk". The distinction English draws with tense, Belarusian draws with aspect.