Подождите минуту, пока чай остынет.

Подождите is the imperative of подождать, which is a perfective verb. In requests like wait a moment, Russian often prefers the perfective imperative because it presents the action as a single, limited whole: wait for a bit.

Ждите comes from ждать and is imperfective. It can sound more like keep waiting or be in a state of waiting, and it is less natural in this specific polite request.

So:

• Подождите минуту = Wait a moment
• Ждите = Wait / Keep waiting in a more ongoing sense

The ending -те marks either:

1. plural imperative, when speaking to more than one person, or
2. polite/formal singular, when speaking to one person respectfully

So Подождите can mean:

• wait when speaking politely to one person
• wait when speaking to several people

The informal singular form is Подожди.

Because минуту is in the accusative case.

In Russian, expressions of duration often use the accusative:

• ждать минуту = to wait a minute
• читать час = to read for an hour
• работать неделю = to work for a week

The dictionary form is минута, but after a verb in this kind of time expression, it becomes минуту.

Not necessarily. Very often минуту in expressions like Подождите минуту is idiomatic and means something like a moment rather than a literal 60 seconds.

It is similar to English Wait a minute or Just a sec, which often do not refer to exact time.

Because пока чай остынет is a subordinate clause.

Russian normally uses a comma before conjunctions like пока when they introduce a clause:

• Подождите минуту, пока чай остынет.

Here the sentence is divided into:

• main clause: Подождите минуту
• subordinate clause: пока чай остынет

So the comma is required.

Here пока means until.

So the structure is:

• Подождите минуту = wait a moment
• пока чай остынет = until the tea cools down

Be careful: пока can have different meanings in Russian depending on context, including:

• while
• until
• for now / bye in conversation

In this sentence, it clearly means until.

Остынет is the perfective future form of остыть.

After пока in a sentence like this, Russian often uses a verb that refers to the point when something is completed:

• пока чай остынет = until the tea has cooled down / until the tea cools down

Остывает is imperfective and means is cooling or cools in a general/ongoing sense. That would focus more on the process, not the completed result.

So:

• остынет = will cool down, reach the cooled state
• остывает = is cooling down, cooling in progress

In this sentence, the idea is to wait until that result happens, so остынет is the natural choice.

In Russian, perfective verbs do not have a true present tense. Their present-looking forms actually refer to the future.

So остынет is grammatically a perfective non-past form, but in meaning it is future:

• чай остынет = the tea will cool down

This is very common in Russian.

The subject is чай.

So literally, the structure is:

• чай = tea
• остынет = will cool down

This verb is intransitive here, meaning the tea itself undergoes the change. Russian is saying the tea will cool down, not someone will cool the tea.

If you wanted cool the tea as an action done by someone, you would need a different structure.

Usually it means cool down, not necessarily become cold.

With food and drinks, остыть often means going from hot/warm to cooler, enough that it is no longer too hot. So in this sentence it most naturally means the tea needs to cool a bit.

It does not have to mean the tea becomes completely cold.

Yes. Russian word order is flexible, though different orders can shift emphasis.

The given sentence is natural:

• Подождите минуту, пока чай остынет.

You could also hear:

• Пока чай остынет, подождите минуту.

That version puts more focus on the until the tea cools down part first.

The original order is probably the most neutral and conversational.

Yes. You can say:

• Подождите, пока чай остынет.

That still means wait until the tea cools down.

Adding минуту makes it sound a little softer and more conversational, similar to English wait a moment. It can make the request feel more natural or polite.