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
In the book "A comprehensive Russian grammar" by Terence Wade, three different rules are shown for how a first conjugation verb ending in -ить is conjugated. It does not explain when each rule is applicable. Is there a rule for this?
The three examples that are given in the book are:
The ending -ить does not tell you much about how a verb is conjugated. As you've seen, verbs ending in -ить can be conjugated differently. Let me throw in:
Note that бре́ю and гнию́ also differ in emphasis.
Moreover, verbs that are conjugated similarly, can have different infinitives:
Your best bet is to consult a dictionary; e.g. the Russian Wiktionary has conjugation tables for most verbs. As you learn more verbs, you'll learn which ones are conjugated similarly:
Andrey Zalizniak's Grammatical Dictionary of Russian lists 16 conjugation classes, but even those are not comprehensive: some verbs have their own distinct conjugation, e.g. мыть - мо́ю, плыть - плыву́, моло́ть - мелю́ and many others.
