Russian Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Russian language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Здравствуйте. I noticed that verbs of motion with the prefix по in the unidirectional forms, for example поехали, are in the past tense, even though the sentence is in the present - for example, сейчас мы поехали в квартиру. I would translate this as "we are going to the apartment." Why is this? Am I not understanding something? Also, do any other verbs of motion prefixes do this, or just the prefix по? There must be a rule. I'd be so grateful of someone could provide it.
Спасибо!
Prefix по- with verbs (wiktionary.org):
Completion of the full or partial coverage of the action object (завершение действия с полным или частичным охватом объекта действия): завтракать → позавтракать; красить → покрасить.
An act for some time (совершение действия в течение некоторого времени): крутить → покрутить; рубить → порубить; ходить → походить.
Start moving (начало движения): ехать → поехать; ползти → поползти; двинуть → подвинуть.
Action produced in large numbers and volume, at the same time giving derogatory (действие, произведённое в значительном количестве или объёме, одновременно придавая пренебрежительный оттенок): наехать → понаехать; разбросать → поразбросать.
In your example "сейчас мы поехали в квартиру" means 'we have started to go to the apartment.'
From the point of view a native Russian. Perfective past tense to me indicates some sense of urgency or desire to have the action performed already. For example, if a runner is drafting behind another one in a track race, and his coach senses that his pupil is not running at his best and it is time to pick it up and take the lead he is more likely to say: "Вышел и пошёл!" rather than the present tense "Выйди и иди!"
Поехать is perfective verb, i.e. it has no present tense at all. Поехали refers to a completed action, which is the start of moving.
Also, do any other verbs of motion prefixes do this, or just the prefix по?
Sure, there are quite a few. But being perfective, they also refer to some completed part of "moving action". For example, отъехать: Поезд уже довольно далеко отъехал от станции. This means that the train went quite far from the station, i.e. it has finished some part of the distance, but it says nothing about whether it stopped or was still moving.
Thus prefixes with motion verbs show which part of moving was finished. If you mean the journey was fully completed, you have to use prefix при-, like in приехать, прийти, прибыть, прилететь, приплыть and so on.
Yet note that sometimes поехать still could serve for the same purpose as simply ехать. That's because the speaker silently implies that after "they have started moving" immediately follows "they were moving", which is simply omitted but should be obvious from the context.
UPD. Now on the matter of "Сейчас мы поехали в квартиру". There's the obvious "time contradiction" between "сейчас" and "поехали", but this is quite tolerable in Russian. Though it makes the sentence ambiguous: it has (at least) three different meanings depending of context and pronounce.
Because words "сейчас, вчера, уже, ..." clearly mark the whole scene on the time-line being pictured by the speaker, and have much higher, almost highest, priority over the tense forms of a verb. Like multiplication over addition are in a mathematical expression.
One person talk to another:
Едем мы вчера с другом на трамвае, и вдруг ... (Past)
but едем = present form of "ехать"
Where are you now?
Мы сейчас в трамвае, поехали на квартиру к Ивану. (Present)
but поехали = past form of "поехать"
Free speech:
Завтра мы едем на квартиру к Ивану. (Future)
I agree with most answers, but want to notice one thing. Word "поехали" is in the paste tense, not because of prefix "по", since "ехали" is also in the paste tense.
Sometimes we use prefixes to change tense of words and sometimes we use suffixes (as here).
