Learn how to form the Irregular Russian Past Tense and then test yourself with the exercises

How to form the Irregular Russian Past Tense
While the vast majority of verbs follow the Regular Past Tense with л in the masculine past tense, some verbs do not and only have the л in the feminine, neuter and plural forms. There are five groups. We will discuss these in this article.

Group -чь

This groups adds a г or к when conjugating.

We will use мочь (to be able) and печь (to bake) as examples.

To know whether to add г or к, we need to look at the first person singular form (or third person plural)of the verb in the present tense.

First, let's look at how мочь conjugates in the Present Tense.

я могу
ты можешь
он может
мы можем
ты можете
они могут


The letter in the first person singular (or third person plural) is г, so that's the letter we will need to add for the past tense.

Now we can form the past tense for this verb:
-We first remove чь from the verb мочь, which gives us мо
-We then add the letter г, which gives us мог
-For masculine, we do nothing. мог is the masculine past tense. For feminine, neuter and plural we add the normal Regular Past Tense endings. могла, могло, могли

Here's the complete conjugation:
он мог
она могла
оно могло
они могли

Let's take our second example, печь.

First we look at how it conjugates in the Present Tense.

пеку
печёшь
печёт
печём
печётре
пекут

We look at the first person singular or the third person plural for the letter we need to add for the Past Tense. The letter in these forms is к.

And now we can conjugate the Past Tense for this verb:
- We remove the чь from the infinitive печь which gives пе
- We then add the required letter we obtained from the present tense conjugation - пек
- For masculine we do nothing. But.......Wait!! We must obey the spelling rule that if the letter е is stressed, it must change to ё. In this case, for the masculine, it will be stressed, so the masculine becomes пёк instead. For feminine, neuter and plural we add the normal Regular Past Tense endings. But, with these, because the stress falls on the past tense ending and not on the letter "e", it remains as "e" and is not changed. So feminine becomes пекла, neuter пекло, and plural пекли

Here's the complete conjugation:
он пёк
она пекла
оно пекло
они пекли

Group -ти

This group ends in ти and are intransitive (changing from one state to another or changing location). Our example is нести 'to carry' and is an intransitive verb because an object is moving location. To form the past tense with this group simply remove ти to get the stem. For masculine, do nothing, but since the stress now falls on a letter 'e', some verbs require it must be changed to ё, and this includes our example verb нести. For feminine, neuter and plural, add the normal past tense endings.


Here's the complete conjugation:
он нёс
она несла
оно несло
они несли



Group -нуть

This group ends in нуть and are intransitive. Our example is замёрзнуть 'to freeze'. We remove нуть to get the stem and add the standard endings for feminine, neuter and plural.

Here's the complete conjugation:
замёрз
замёрзла
замёрзло
замёрзли


Group -ереть

This group ends in ереть. We will use запереть 'to look' as the example verb for this group. Remove еть to get the stem and add the standard past endings for feminine and plural.


Here's the complete conjugation:
запер
заперла
заперло
запели


Group -зть

This group ends in зть. We will use лезть 'to climb' as the example verb for this group. Remove ть to get the stem and add the standard past endings for feminine and plural.


Here's the complete conjugation:
лез
лезла
лезло
лезли

Russian Past Tense Exercises
Now do the following exercises to see that you've understood how to form the Russian Past Tense.

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