Russian Participles: Active, Passive, and Agreement
Participles describe a noun through an action. They behave like adjectives in agreement, but preserve information about who performs or receives an action. These common written-language patterns are easiest to learn alongside relative clauses.
Recognise Russian active and passive participles, understand adjective agreement, short passive forms, and participial punctuation.
Active doer or passive receiver?
An active participle describes a noun doing the action: студент, читающий книгу (a student reading a book). A passive participle describes a noun affected by the action: книга, прочитанная студентом (a book read by a student).
Present active читающий describes reading in progress relative to the scene; past passive прочитанный presents the book as already read. “Present” here means simultaneous with a reference point, not necessarily at the moment of speaking.
Студент, читающий книгу, сидит у окна.
The student reading a book is sitting by the window.
Книга, прочитанная студентом, лежит на столе.
The book read by the student is on the table.
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Distinguish active and passive participlesFormation: useful patterns, not a universal recipe
Present active participles come from imperfective present stems, commonly with -ущ-/-ющ- or -ащ-/-ящ-: читать → читающий, говорить → говорящий. Past active participles often use -вш- after a vowel or -ш- after a consonant: прочитать → прочитавший, принести → принёсший.
Present passive participles are formed from suitable imperfective transitive verbs (читать → читаемый); past passive participles often use perfective transitive verbs (прочитать → прочитанный). Not every verb has every participle; stem changes, stress, and lexical restrictions require checking a dictionary.
Девочка, говорящая по-русски, живёт здесь.
The girl who speaks Russian lives here.
Письмо, написанное вчера, уже отправлено.
The letter written yesterday has already been sent.
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Choose participle formsA full participle agrees with its noun
Like a full adjective, a full participle changes for gender, number, and case with the noun it describes: читающий студент, читающая студентка, читающие студенты. Its own complements remain attached to the participle: читающая книгу студентка.
The participle can appear before or after its noun, but its ending still follows the noun's grammatical features. In вижу читающую студентку, both descriptive word and noun are feminine accusative.
Я вижу студентку, читающую книгу.
I see a student who is reading a book.
Я вижу читающую студентку.
I see a student who is reading.
Читающую agrees with студентку.
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Practise participle agreementFull modifier versus short passive predicate
A full passive participle can modify a noun: написанное письмо (the written letter). A short passive participle normally forms a predicate: письмо написано (the letter has been written). Short forms agree in gender and number, but do not decline through cases.
Contrast письмо, написанное утром, лежит здесь with письмо написано утром. In the first, написанное modifies письмо; in the second, написано makes a statement about it.
Эта статья написана вчера.
This article was written yesterday.
Feminine short passive: написана.
Я прочитал статью, написанную вчера.
I read the article written yesterday.
Full passive: написанную agrees with accusative статью.
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Contrast full and short passive formsParticipial phrases and commas
A participial phrase after the noun it modifies is generally set off by commas: книга, лежащая на столе, моя. Before the noun, a normal restrictive phrase generally has no comma: лежащая на столе книга моя.
This is a useful default, not an exhaustive punctuation rule: detached explanatory or causal phrases, pronouns, and other contexts can change punctuation. For a simple relative clause, you can often write книга, которая лежит на столе.
Девушка, читающая у окна, — моя сестра.
The woman reading by the window is my sister.
Читающая у окна девушка — моя сестра.
The woman reading by the window is my sister.
The preposed restrictive phrase is not set off here.