Breakdown of Мы узнали, где живёт друг.
где
where / wherever
друг
friend
жить
to live
узнать
to find out, to learn
Questions & Answers about Мы узнали, где живёт друг.
Why do we use the perfective verb узнали here?
Узнали comes from the perfective verb узнать. We use the perfective aspect here because finding out was a single, completed event with a result in the past. If you used the imperfective counterpart (узнавали), it would mean you were in the ongoing process of trying to find out.
Why is живёт in the present tense if the action happened in the past?
In English, we often match past tenses and say 'We found out where our friend lived,' even if they still live there. Russian doesn't do this! You use the tense from the perspective of the people at the exact moment they found out. To them, the friend is currently living there, so Russian keeps the present tense живёт.
Why doesn't the Russian sentence include a word for 'our' before друг?
Russian often drops possessive pronouns like наш (our) or мой (my) when the context makes it obvious who you are talking about. Adding it wouldn't be wrong, but leaving it out sounds very natural and conversational to a native speaker.
Is the comma before где required?
Yes! In English, we don't put a comma before 'where' in this kind of sentence. But in Russian, you almost always need a comma to separate the main sentence from a second part that starts with question words like где (where), что (what/that), or почему (why).
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