What's the difference between помнить and вспомнить?

Question

Looking помнить and вспомнить up in a dictionary yields the same results. Is there any difference between them?

Answer 1

Помнить is just "to remember" in sense to keep in mind, to retain (in the memory), so it is not bind any temporal context.

Closest to вспомнить is "to recall", "to recollect". So it is something about having something in mind again.

Compare:

• Мария помнит о работе. (Maria [always] remembers about the job).
• Мария вспомнила о работе. ([All of a sudden] Maria remembered about the job).

I guess you are confused because in English you can express both of this with remember, but, be warned, in Russian phrase such like "он вдруг помнил" is incorrect.

Also, it worth to mention that by adding prefix вс- (or вз- with voiced consonants) to some other verbs gives a connotation of suddenness as well.

Answer 2

помнить and вспомнить are imperfective and perfective aspects of the same verb. See Russian Verbs - Aspect

That's why you probably find both of them when looking up 'remember'. And in the Russian-English dictionary again they both refer to 'remember'. Do not get confused by other examples mentioned here. Almost all Russian verbs have 2 aspects:

помнить - вспомнить
напоминать - напомнить
вспоминать - вспомнить
поминать - помянуть
мнить - возомнить
мять - смять
внимать - внять
вставлять - вставить
таять - растаять

The rules for forming perfective aspect from imperfective exist but most of the time you'll have to learn these two forms for each verb and even for each meaning of the verb separately. Eg.:

держать слово - сдержать слово (keep your word)
держать ложку - взять вилку (hold a spoon - take a fork)

It's probably one of the hardest things to learn for a foreigner as for a native speaker most of this is very intuitive.

Eg. although помнить and вспоминать are both in the imperfective aspect and they both have the same perfective counterpart they still have different meaning:

Ты его помнишь? - Do you remember him?
Ты часто его вспоминаешь? - Do you reminisce/recall/recollect him often?

Answer 3

Помнить - to remember, to actively keep remembering, indicating an ongoing process.

Вспомнить - to recall something that you did not actively keep in mind, to all of a sudden remember something.