The Belarusian past tense agrees in gender and number, not in person, and the masculine ends in -ў, not -л: чытаў, рабіў, быў. The single most visible difference from Russian.
I can talk about what happened yesterday, making the verb agree with the gender and number of the subject.
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
Учора я быў у Нацыянальнай бібліятэцы.
Yesterday I was at the National Library.
Мая сястра чытала Багдановіча ўвесь вечар.
My sister read Bahdanovich all evening.
Мы хадзілі на Купалле да ракі.
We went to the river for Kupalle.
Ён ішоў праз лес і нёс кошык грыбоў.
He walked through the forest carrying a basket of mushrooms.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
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.
| Subject | Ending | чытаць → | рабіць → |
|---|---|---|---|
| masculine (я, ты, ён) | -ў | чытаў | рабіў |
| feminine (я, ты, яна) | -ла | чытала | рабіла |
| neuter (яно) | -ла | чытала | рабіла |
| plural (мы, вы, яны) | -лі | чыталі | рабілі |
Я чытаў is said by a man, я чытала by a woman. The pronoun does not change; the verb does.
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.
A small group of common verbs has a bare masculine form with no ending at all, and the -л- reappears in the other three:
| Infinitive | m. | f. | pl. |
|---|---|---|---|
| несці (to carry) | нёс | нясла | неслі |
| везці (to transport) | вёз | вязла | везлі |
| магчы (to be able) | мог | магла | маглі |
| ісці (to go) | ішоў | ішла | ішлі |
Belarusian verbs come in pairs. The imperfective describes the activity, the perfective its completion, and both have the same set of past endings:
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.
Apply this grammar in A1 course exercises
Practice ExercisesTypical errors: leaving the past tense in one form because English does not mark gender on verbs, so a woman says я чытаў; and reaching for a perfect tense that does not exist — Я быў у Мінску is both "I was" and "I have been".
Error with Прошлы час
Review Прошлы час.
Учора я быў у Нацыянальнай бібліятэцы.
Yesterday I was at the National Library.
<strong>Быў</strong> with the <em>ў</em> ending, said by a man. The National Library in Minsk is the rhombicuboctahedron that lights up at night.
Мая сястра чытала Багдановіча ўвесь вечар.
My sister read Bahdanovich all evening.
Feminine subject, so <em>-ла</em>. Maksim Bahdanovich wrote the small body of verse that shaped modern Belarusian poetry before dying at twenty-five.
Мы хадзілі на Купалле да ракі.
We went to the river for Kupalle.
Plural <em>-лі</em>. On Kupalle night wreaths are floated on the water and the fires are kept up until dawn.
Ён ішоў праз лес і нёс кошык грыбоў.
He walked through the forest carrying a basket of mushrooms.
Two of the endingless masculine forms in one sentence: <strong>ішоў</strong> and <strong>нёс</strong>. Mushrooming is close to a national pastime.
Скарына надрукаваў першую кнігу ў 1517 годзе.
Skaryna printed the first book in 1517.
A perfective past: the action is complete. Francysk Skaryna printed in Prague, making Belarusian one of the earliest vernaculars to reach print.
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in A1 course exercises
The current academic reference grammar; the linked edition serves the full text. Cited for its verb section, which treats the infinitive, transitivity and reflexivity before the conjugation paradigms, and gives the participle suffixes -уч- (-юч-), -ач- (-яч-) and -ш-, -ўш-, -т-, -н- alongside the gerund suffixes -ўшы, -шы and -учы (-ючы), -ачы (-ячы).
The academic reference grammar behind the phonology, orthoepy and morphology sections: the 32-letter inventory, дж and дз as digraphs rather than letters, and the normative description of akanne and jakanne. A print work; no URL is given, because the only one available is a library catalogue record that carries none of the text.