Today we'll learn about asking “How long does it take to get to such-and-such a place.” Probably the easiest way is to use the phrase «как долго» “how long” followed by a unidirectional infinitive and the prepositions от/до. (От and до are usually used to mean “from” and “to” when talking about distances or times.) Of course, you will want to change the verb depending on the mode of transport:

If you want to ask about how long it will take on a particular occasion, then of course you can use either the past or future as well:

The phrase «сколько времени» can replace «как долго» in all those sentences and will mean the same thing.

The next generic verb of motion is пойти. Note especially its irregular past tense forms.

Пойти is more specialized than ходить in that it always talks about motion in one particular direction; since it is perfective it also focuses on some result of the action:

In that sentence, the result is that I arrived at the pharmacy and thus could make my purchase.

Пойти can also be used to describe each leg of a multileg journey:

Of course you can do the same thing in the future tense:

Now here's something amusing... let's think about this English dialog:

Does the second sentence imply that Mom got to the store? No, it doesn't. Here it emphasizes absence from the point of departure while mentioning her intended destination. Likewise in Russian a perfective verb of motion can be used with meaning of “absence from point of departure”:

The sentence does not say whether Mom has necessarily reached the store, just that she is no longer here.

¹ In terms of the classical description of English grammar, this sentence should be, “She has gone to the store.” For some English speakers that is still the best version of the sentence, but the English present perfect is slowly being replaced by the simple past, so “She went to the store” sounds perfectly normal for many speakers of American English.

The next generic verb of motion is идти. Note especially its irregular past tense forms.

Идти is more specialized than ходить in that it always talks about motion in progress toward a particular place. Because of that “in progress” bit, we can often translate it as “heading to” or “on the way to”:

Although adverbs of frequency and phrases of frequency (like часто and каждый день) usually trigger an indeterminate verb, if the situation describes something that happens regularly on the way to a place, then you use the determinate verb идти:

One of the curious uses of determinate verbs is that they can be used to say how long it takes to get to a place. From the English-speaking point of view, that is rather odd. After all, getting to the place implies a completed action, so we should use a perfective verb, right? But from the Russian point of view in these sentences they are indicating how long the process takes, so the imperfective works:

Ходить is the most generic word in Russian that means “to go.”

Because it implies travelling under one's own power (that is, not using some device or animal for transportation), we often translate it “to walk”:

The verb is also used in sentences where someone regularly goes somewhere.

The verb is also used to describe the motion of someone walking around a place with no set goal or direction, e.g. walking around a park for pleasure, walking around the city, or going here and there among shops:

Last but not least, the verb is used to indicate a single round-trip in the past. In this usage it implies that the person is no longer at the place mentioned.

Russian verbs of motion have the reputation of being quite difficult. Certainly they take some practice, but if you just calmly, slowly, and methodically work on them, particularly identifying what contexts they are used in as we did here, then you can certainly master them.

Here is a list of the fifteen verbs of motion. They are usually taught in verb triplets, not pairs. If you want to work on these verbs, I suggest Muravyova's “Verbs of Motion in Russian” if you can still get it, and also William Mahota's “Russian Motion Verbs for Intermediate Students.”

To communicate the idea of starting a process, Russian can either use specific verbal prefixes or one of several specific verbs. The most basic verb is начинать/начать.

The verb can be complemented by either a noun or an infinitive phrase. In either case the person who starts the process is in the nominative case. When working with nouns, the thing that starts is in the accusative case:

When using an infinitive phrase after this verb, that infinitive MUST be an imperfective infinitive:

One thing you CANNOT do with this verb is to say something like “The movie starts at 5:00.” For that you need the reflexive form of the verb, which we will discuss tomorrow.