Подумал было

I’ve come across this sort of construct several times, but don’t recall it from school days. How does “было” change the meaning of this sentence?

“Арсений подумал было, что человек еще далеко.”

(Still from the novel Лавр, but no more crazy words.)

= сначала подумал

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Here’s a 68-page explanation with a lot of examples :smiley: (pdf):

https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjMobf99KzMAhWJYpoKHWPnCY8QFggbMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.uva.nl%2Fbinaries%2Fcontent%2Fdocuments%2Fpersonalpages%2Fb%2Fa%2Fa.a.barentsen%2Fen%2Ftab-three%2Ftab-three%2Fcpitem%255B2%255D%2Fasset%3F1355373295411&usg=AFQjCNGev2k7UOSfIWRxWNrJZ0IdarEA2Q&sig2=fj3Y1O3X7IzsEhv6XRgCHA&bvm=bv.120551593,d.bGs&cad=rjt

It’s a curious coincidence that you came across this construction in Лавр, because this is actually the remnant of the Old Russian grammar. In Old Russian “подумал было” would be the pluperfect (an event which took place before another event), which was constructed with the past parcticiple (in this case “подумал”) and the past tense of the verb быть (“было”), just like in English. Over time the past particle with the suffix -л became the past form of the verb, compound perfect and pluperfect tenses disappeared, but the pattern remained, having changed the meaning and grammar categories so that now было is a particle and подумал is a verb. I hope this helps you understand better the idea behind this pattern which, I suppose, seems grammatically very strange at first sight.

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Hmmm… A 68-page PDF document or two words from Evgueny. Both you and he confirm what I had suspected, though. Thanks for the detail!

That link doesn’t work for me, by the way. Some time ago I had seen another, shorter paper about such tenses in both Russian and German, though I didn’t recall the details. How the language has changed over time in ways such as this is really interesting, though of course I’m in no way prepared to delve deeply into such topics.

NO, no, no!.. I am AGAINST such detailed explanations!
And even for the Russian students if they are not the specialists in the history of Russian language!..
The explanation must be clear and short, otherwise it doesn’t help at all, moreover - it can confuse the learner.

Yes, it doesn’t work for some reason. The paper is called ''The use of the particle было in Modern Russian" by A.A.Barentsen

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I am a curious person, so I enjoy the sort of background information that Bautov provided - for general knowledge if not active language learning. There is indeed a difference between knowing the language and knowing about the language. I’m working on the former, but I do find the latter interesting. (I probably wouldn’t make it too far into that 68-page document, though!)

This novel Лавр I think is a curious book for someone at my level to be reading. It is peppered with archaic language. (I won’t litter this forum with more questions about that.) I also wonder whether some of the author’s grammatical constructs are archaic, idiosyncratic, or perhaps a combination of both. Nevertheless, I am enjoying both the story and the language.

As for the topic of this thread, I asked a simple question and you provided the simple answer – thank you! I do agree with you that for the purpose of understanding this construct additional background detail, though interesting to me, is not necessary and could be daunting to some. Especially if provided instead of, rather than along with, the simple answer.