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The first thing you need to learn is that Russian verbs can be written in their 'conjugated' form or their 'infinitive' form. A verb is said to be 'conjugated' when you attach a pronoun to a verb, for example:

I write
She writes
They write etc

Notice that for the verb conjugation associated with "She" we must add an "s" to "write" to make it grammatically correct - "she writes". In English, we are lucky that we only have to remember this special rule for "he / she" pronouns, because in Russian every pronoun causes the verb to have a different ending!!!! Oh no!!

By now you will have realised that this is the great difficulty with the Russian language. The endings of most words change according to grammatical rules and subsequently make it very hard for the beginner. But it is doable over time, just take it in small doses and practice, practice, practice what you already know.

In a Russian-English dictionary you will find Russian verbs written in their 'infinitive' form. In English, this corresponds with "to make, to swim, to write, to laugh, etc". For example, "He doesn't know how to swim".

You can recognise the infinite form of Russian verbs because they mostly end with -ть.

For example:

говорить (to speak)
понимать (to understand)
читать (to read)

(when you use the infinite form in a sentence don't forget to pronounce your -ть correctly!)

ok, so now you should understand the difference between the infinitive form and the conjugated form. And if you're brave, let's delve further into the conjugated form.

To speak

говорить

Pronounced:

ga-va-rEEt'

Listen:

(Lena)

To understand

понимать

Pronounced:

pa-ni-mAt'

Listen:

(Lena)

To read

читать

Pronounced:

chi-tAt'

Listen:

(Lena)