The basic verb that means “to take” in Russian is брать/взять. Notice that for both verbs the past/infinitive stem differs from the present/future/imperative stem. Note also the ь that appears in the middle of the future/imperative forms of взять.

The simplest meaning of the verb is “to grasp/pick up something with the hands”:

The verb pair can also mean “to remove from its previous position”:

Very often the verb is used in the context where Americans would use “to get”:

Sometimes the verb is essentially the same as “to buy,” at least when the context is clear:

Although we won't go over them here, it's a good idea to remember that брать/взять has quite a few other meanings as well, just as “to take” does in English. Among them are:

• to rent (a car, etc.)
• to accept someone into a group
• to take control of
• to make a sound
• to go in a particular direction

As a beginning language student, it is always good to remember that if a word doesn't seem to make sense in a particular context, it may well have other meanings in addition to those you already know. Always have a good paper dictionary which you can consult when the internet is down. And always know two or three online dictionaries that you can consult. Actually, what dictionaries to use is a good topic of discussion as well, but we'll save that for another day.

The verb видеть/увидеть means “to see.”

While the imperfective is almost always translated “to see,” the perfective can often be translated “to spot, to catch sight of”:

The verb замечать/заметить means “to notice observe.” It conjugates like this:

The thing you notice goes in the accusative case:

You can also follow the verb with an entire clause. The clause usually begins with что, but it can also begin with a question word used as a relative pronoun:

The basic verb in Russian that means “to eat” is есть/съесть. Notice that the second letter of the perfective forms is a hard sign, not a soft sign. This is one of the four most irregular verb stems in the language. (The others are the stems of дать, хотеть and бежать.)

There are a couple potentially confusing points here. Notice first of all that the imperfective infinitive is spelled the same as есть, that quirky present tense form of “to be” that appears in “there is/are” and “have” sentences.

The next trick is that есть is actually pronounced differently from ест. In both words the first sound is a y sound as in yes, but the vowel quality is different:

Here are a couple sentences where you can hear the difference:

As to the grammar of the verb, the thing that you eat shows up in the accusative case:

In English we often say things like “I ate breakfast/lunch/dinner,” and in Russian theoretically it's grammatical to say things like «Я (съ)ел завтрак/обед/ужин.» But frankly the Russians rarely say that. Instead they subsitute the verbs that directly address those meals: «Мы (по)завтракалали/(по)обедали/(по)ужинали».

* The careful student may notice that in this sentence the accusative plural акриды copies the nominative plural, which is atypical for modern Russian. Animate accusative plurals did not always automatically copy the genitive. This change began hundreds of years ago with words referring to male human beings, and then it eventually spread to other noun classes. That process is nearly complete in modern Russian, although there are still a few constructions where animate nouns sometimes occur in the accusative plural in a form that copies the nominative.

Since работать/поработать means “to work,” you will want to be able to use it to say that so-and-so works for so-and-so. Beginning students of Russian often use the word для as the most generic word for “for,” (not the best idea, incidentally), so one might be tempted to translate “I work for Honeywell” as «Я работаю для фирмы “Хоневелл”». Nope, that would be error. When you want to express the idea that you work full time for an organization, the prepositions you want are в and на followed by the prepositional case. (Follow the general guideliness for selecting на.)

Now here is a subtlety. If you work for a company or organization part time, then you work на followed by the accusative case:

¹ Фирма is normally a на word. Why the heck the Russians say в in this context is a mystery to me.