Präsens: die beiden Konjugationen

Ukrainian has a single present tense where English has two: читаю covers both "I read" and "I am reading". There is no "do" for questions or negatives either: Ти читаєш? "Do you read? / Are you reading?" What Ukrainian has instead is a personal ending on the verb for each person.

Two conjugations

Verbs fall into two families. Learn one model verb for each and most regular verbs follow:

The 1st conjugation runs on the vowel е (written є after a vowel: читаєш, but несеш "you carry"). The 2nd runs on и (or ї after a vowel: стоїш "you stand"). The quickest test is the "he/she" form: -є / -е means 1st, -ить / -їть means 2nd.

Typical slips

• Leaving the ending off, English-style: the verb has to show the person. Я говорю, ти говориш, вони говорять.
• Translating "I am reading" with a form of "to be": *Я є читаю is not Ukrainian. Я читаю.
• Guessing the conjugation from the infinitive. -ити verbs are mostly 2nd conjugation and -ати verbs mostly 1st, but there are exceptions in both directions (бити "to beat": б'ю, б'єш; спати "to sleep": сплю, спиш). Check the ти form in the dictionary.

Two common patterns inside the 1st conjugation

Verbs in -увати swap that suffix for -у-: працювати "to work" gives працюю, працюєш, працюють; малювати "to draw" gives малюю. And in the 2nd conjugation, the я form sometimes changes the last consonant of the stem: ходити "to walk" gives ходжу but ходиш; любити "to love" gives люблю but любиш.

The ending carries so much information that the pronoun is often dropped once the subject is clear: Де працюєш? - У Львові, працюю в кав'ярні. "Where do you work? - In Lviv, I work in a café."