Вчера я прочитал интересный пост в интернете.

Yesterday I read an interesting post on the internet.

Breakdown of Вчера я прочитал интересный пост в интернете.

• я: I
• вчера: yesterday
• интересный: interesting
• интернет: the internet

Questions & Answers about Вчера я прочитал интересный пост в интернете.

Why is the verb прочитал used here instead of читал? What’s the difference?

Russian has two aspects for most verbs: imperfective and perfective.

• читать – imperfective (to read, be reading, used to read)
• прочитать – perfective (to read through, to finish reading)

In the sentence Вчера я прочитал интересный пост в интернете:

• прочитал (past tense of прочитать) shows a completed, one-time action: you started reading the post and finished it.
• читал (past tense of читать) would emphasize the process, not the completion. For example:
  • Вчера я читал интересный пост в интернете can imply “I was reading an interesting post yesterday” (maybe you didn’t finish, or the fact of reading is more important than completion).

Since we usually care that we finished reading the post, прочитал is more natural here.

Why прочитал and not прочитала or прочитали? How does gender and number work in the past tense?