I translated the sentence ‘The girl who stole books’ the other day as
but got corrected to
I’d picked открадвам because it was the first verb I found when I looked ‘to steal’ up, so I didn’t realise крада existed. When I tried to find information on the exact relationship that exists in крада – открадна – открадавам, I found a section in the Wikipedia article on Bulgarian verbs about secondary imperfective verbs, and I could see that a secondary imperfective verb (открадавам here) is just as imperfective as the original verb (крада), but preserves the perfective qualities of the perfective form (открадна), so that it can be used in situations where grammar wouldn’t allow a perfective verb, or when one wants to emphasise that a complete (perfective) action took place but was repeated over time.
So far, so good on what concerns theory, but, in practice, how exactly would the two sentences above (my original translation and the correction) differ, or how my translation would sound off? I’m almost sure that the prefix от- is playing some role here regarding a more exact/subtle nuance of stealing, but I can’t tell which.
P.S.: Just out of curiosity, the sentence I translated comes from the title in Portuguese of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak: ‘A menina que roubava livros’.
„Момчето, което открадваше книги.“
but got corrected to
„Момчето, което крадеше книги.“
I’d picked открадвам because it was the first verb I found when I looked ‘to steal’ up, so I didn’t realise крада existed. When I tried to find information on the exact relationship that exists in крада – открадна – открадавам, I found a section in the Wikipedia article on Bulgarian verbs about secondary imperfective verbs, and I could see that a secondary imperfective verb (открадавам here) is just as imperfective as the original verb (крада), but preserves the perfective qualities of the perfective form (открадна), so that it can be used in situations where grammar wouldn’t allow a perfective verb, or when one wants to emphasise that a complete (perfective) action took place but was repeated over time.
So far, so good on what concerns theory, but, in practice, how exactly would the two sentences above (my original translation and the correction) differ, or how my translation would sound off? I’m almost sure that the prefix от- is playing some role here regarding a more exact/subtle nuance of stealing, but I can’t tell which.
P.S.: Just out of curiosity, the sentence I translated comes from the title in Portuguese of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak: ‘A menina que roubava livros’.