Often when you learn a verb in Russian, it's helpful to learn the verb as a verb pair. One such pair is читать/почитать.

When по- is prefixed to many imperfective verbs, it adds the meaning of ‘for a while,’ as it does with читать. So the verb pair читать/почитать is good for indicating how long one reads.

For the most part one can't use bare accusative duration phrases with perfective verbs, but one exception is perfective verbs when по- means ‘for a while.’ ¹

Читать/почитать can also take a direct object, usually the thing you are reading or the author you are reading.

¹ Another exception is verbs prefixed with про- when it means ‘through a specific period of time.’

I have just realized that I have never blogged before about the word читать. Hm. Seems pretty basic, eh? Still, we can probably come up with something. Let's start with the basic imperfective verb.

The verb has several meanings, one of which is ‘to know how to read.’ In this sense it only has an imperfective, no perfective.

If you want to specify the ability to read a language, then add the language in the по- adverbial form.

Ah, that last little dialog is a cultural puzzle for the reader. In what well known series of novels can supernaturally gifted beings understand foreign languages without training? You may show off your knowledge in the comments.

Russian has a whole series of verbs that mean ‘to enter.’ One means to enter by one's one power, another by vehicle, another by water, another by crawling, another by running... Frankly, I expect that if we ever achieve interstellar space travel, it will develop verbs that mean ‘to enter by space’ and ‘to enter by hyperspace.’ For today we will focus on ‘to enter (by one's own power)’ or ‘to walk in to.’ That verb is:

Note that the place you enter appears in the accusative case after the preposition в.

A majorly important verb in Russian is договариваться/­договориться. It means ‘to come to an agreement about doing something.’ It conjugates like this:

The verb is first of all used to say you agree with the plans that have been discussed. In that context one uses it almost exclusively in the plural:

Almost every conversation about making plans includes the word that way. The verb can also be used in the sense of “to make plans”:

One of the verbs that means ‘to fall in love’ is:

Note that the verb is complemented by a prepositional phrase with в followed by the accusative case.

Although the verb is mostly used in the past tense, it can be used in other tenses as well.

You may recall that we previously said that полюбить can also mean ‘to fall in love.’ That leaves us with the question of when to use which verb. Actually, you can start some pretty interesting arguments among Russians about which is the more serious emotion, полюбить or влюбиться. Nonetheless, I can give you one guideline, if you suddenly fall head over heels in love with a person, then влюбиться is the verb you use to describe it, not полюбить.