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Dokonany/Niedokonany - Perfective/Imperfective [46]
Yeah it is a pain because we don't have this concept in English. But once you've go the hang of it you will realise that it's a lot simpler than verbs in English (I drank, I was drinking, I had drunk, I have drunk etc..). I hope this helps:
1. I notice you have added 'to do' in your perfective definition. Don't - the meaning is the same it's just the aspect that is different. Imperfective emphasises the state of the verb, perfective emphasises the result or change of state.
Example:
piłem kawę i ktoś zadzwonił - I was drinking coffee and somebody called. Drinking is imperfective because I am emphasising the action of drinking, i.e. what I was doing (the state) at the time of the call.
I could have said wypiłem kawę i ktoś zadzwonil which would be - I drank my coffee and somebody called. Here I put drinking in the perfective because the action of drinking was completed and then something else happened.
2. Yes often you will see that the perfective looks like the imperfective but with a prefix such as po, na, do, s, wy etc.. but the problem is, is that it's not always the case and it's not regular.
Example:
pić and wypić, jeść and zjeść
3. Often you can take a different prefix, add it to the imperfective and you get a slightly changed meaning.
Example:
If you take 'pić' you can have -
dopić - to drink up, upić (się) - to get drunk, odpić - to sip.
This is a useful construction because if you recognise the root of the word then you can often get the meaning, or at least the gist of it, but it's also a pain because you need to recognise that these are variants. For example how do you know unless you learnt it first that 'wypić' is the perfective of 'pić' and not in fact a variant meaning 'to drink out'? You don't...
Also sometimes you can get an oddball in there - such as obchodzić. Looks like it should mean 'to walk around' but also means 'to celebrate, to observe (a Holiday, religious occasion etc...)'.
3. Sometimes the pair is not made with a prefix but with a different ending as you mentioned. But again, no regularity to this.
Example - kupować and kupić, zamykać and zamknąć
4. Sometimes the imperfective looks nothing like the perfective.
Example - brać and wziąć
I recommend the book "301 Polish Verbs" by Klara Janecki which covers a lot of this stuff. It talks about prefixes, perfective/imperfective and then lists a lot of verbs and how to conjugate them.
