У вихідні я встаю зазвичай пізніше, але сьогодні я встав дуже рано, тому що я не добре спав минулої ночі.
U vyxidní ja vstáju zazvychái pizníshe, alé s'ohódni ja vstáv dúzhe ráno, tomú shcho ja ne dóbre spáv mynúloji nóchi.
Took a lesson with a tutor the other day. Said some things, asked some questions, got some tips. Forgot simple words like "only" and "a little".
Didn't really know what I was doing but now I actually have some ideas about how I can use those lessons better. Composed a bunch of sentences like this, with the help of a
youtube video, made notes on unclear parts, possible alternatives, aspect changes (one such in the sentence above), fixed expressions like "at # o'clock". A few expressions like "[ I sleep ] for as long as I want", or "[such and such time] at the latest", of which satisfying translations are hard to find, I'll ask about those.
In Ukrainian, verbs come in pairs. One imperfect, one perfect. Each one with its own particular pattern. Only the imperfect has a present tense, both have past and future. Some of that you can figure out easily, or make sense of when you see them - I
usually get up [from bed], я встаю зазвичай, vstáju, present of vstaváti вставати, the imperfect ; vs. but
today I got up, але сьогодні я встав, vstáv, past of vstáti встати, the perfect (whereas the past imperfect would be vstaváv).
But how do the different future tenses work? What does it mean that both aspects have a passive participle - the one that is found in phrases of the kind "a closed door", and "this book has been opened by someone". Or that there is a perfect and imperfect form, both of which I've seen in use, of the verb "can"?
This is actually the main reason I had to change my strategy, because I'm used to just writing words down, but here this would be cumbersome and unintuitive (I had a shot at Czech earlier, which has a similar system, and where I basically just ignored that part). Likewise does it not make sense to cram information about individual units, since there isn't much I could even reliable gather. And by chance this made the entire study process easier and more enjoyable.
