The verbs of motion are a special group of verbs in Russian which have their own characteristics.
Unlike in English, in the Russian language we distinguish between movement in one direction and movement in both or many directions. We distinguish between one time movement and repeated movement. And we also distinguish between movement on foot and movement by transport.
To express a same action in Russian we use pairs of two different verbs that have the same meaning but the first one describes movement in one direction or one time movement, and the second one describes movement in two or many directions or repeated movement. But be careful! Don’t get confused, this is not a perfective – imperfective pair. Both of these verbs are imperfective. So let’s take the pair ИДТИ – ХОДИТЬ. Both of these verbs are imperfective which means that they describe a process and can have present, past and future tenses.
What else should we know about the verbs of motion? You might be taught that they express movement therefore they require the accusative case. But this is not quite correct, because verbs of motion can be followed by different prepositions. So when a verb of motion is followed by a preposition we will use the case required by that specific preposition. Let me give you an example: Я иду в школу. Я подошла к школе. Я отошла от школы.
Now to all of these verbs we can add different prefixes which can specify the direction of movement or its duration. I will not go into details about it here, but I will quickly show you how adding a different prefix can change the meaning of a particular verb of motion. Let’s take the verb ходить. We can derive many different verbs from it by simply adding a different prefix: походить (to walk for a while), переходить (to cross), проходить (to go through), сходить (to go and come back / to go down), доходить (to reach), отходить (to move away from), входить (to enter), уходить (to leave), выходить (to exit), обходить (to go around).
To find out more about the Russian verbs of motion, watch my video below.
⬇️ Download your FREE Russian Verbs of Motion cheat sheet here:
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