The word пока can also be used as an adverb that means “in the meantime, for the moment, for now.”

Another meaning of пока is "see you later":

If you count the syllables of that dialog, you see that Russian only takes 10 syllables to say what English says in 15 syllables. See how much more efficient Russian is than the decaying languages of the West? Aren't you glad you are studying Russian? Other examples:

¹ Бабки and братан are slang. Don't use them in front of your Russian teachers unless you want them to think you are a complete hoodlum.

Yesterday we discussed one of the uses of пока in sentences where it means “while.” Sometimes you may encounter a clause that contains both пока and the negative particle не. The first time you see such a thing, you might produce a first-guess translation like this:

What the devil? Let's see. If she slept while something didn't happen, that means she stopped sleeping when it did happen... in other words, she slept until the alarmclock started rining! That's right: often the proper translation for пока in combination with не is “until”:

This use of «пока…не» to mean “until” can happen in any tense: past, present, or future. The clause in which «пока…не» occurs is called a subjoined clause. For the most part you find the perfective past or perfective future in subjoined пока clauses:

It is also possible for an imperfective verb to appear in the “until” clause if you have to habitually wait for it:

Notice that in the first example, both clauses had an imperfective past tense; in the second — an imperfective present tense. It would be logical to assume that you could also put together a sentence like this with both clauses in the imperfective future. In other words something like:

But when Russians hear such sentences, they tend not to like the imperfective future in the subjoined clause. Instead the perfective future sounds better to them:

This is one of those instances where aspect doesn't work quite like we would expect from our beginning textbooks. Frankly, aspect is one of the most consistently tricky parts of the Russian language.

I wish I could say that пока in composition with не should always be translated “until,” but that is simply not the case. Crud. That means I may have to write about two more meanings of пока.

The word пока is a conjunction that means “while.” It can be used with verbs in the past, present, or future:

When пока means “while,” it is essentially synonomous with когда followed by an imperfective verb, although sometimes the пока version sounds a bit better than the когда version, and sometimes it's the other way around. But on the whole all three of the sentences we just saw can be rewritten with когда and mean essentially the same thing:

• Папа готовил ужин, когда мама убирала в гостиной.
• Каждое утро, когда я одеваюсь, брат принимает душ.
• Когда я буду в Москве, я буду ходить на занятия йоги два-три раза в неделю.

In grammatical terms the clause that contains пока is called a subjoined clause. The other clause is called a main clause. A subjoined clause that begins with пока in the “while” meaning must always contain an imperfective verb as its primary verb. The main clause can have either a perfective verb or an imperfective verb.

The verb in the main clause simply follows the standard rules for the imperfective/perfective distinction.

What we've written here probably seems way too basic to warrant a blog entry. So why bother? There's a method to this madness. Tomorrow's entry discuss the word пока when it combines with the negative particle не, and that combination often throws people for a loop. You may want to refer back to this entry once you've read the next one to see the contrast.