Productive subclasses and less transparent stems
Recognise that familiar Type I endings can attach to several stem-building patterns.
Verbs such as рисовать and искать still use Type I endings, but their present stems are not obtained by simply deleting -ть.
- The verified я form of рисовать is рисую, not *рисоваю.
- искать has present stem ищ-: ищу.
- Written learner build: чита- + -ю → читаю.
- In linguistic notation, /j/ means the ‘y’ sound in English ‘yes’. It is not the English j sound in ‘job’.
- You do not type a separate j in Russian. Letters such as ю, я, е, and ё can include this sound in their pronunciation or spelling structure.
Mini-check
Why is *рисоваю not the verified present form?
More detail: why linguists sometimes write j
Some grammatical analyses write the present stem as читаj-. The symbol j represents the ‘y’ sound in yes, not the English j sound in job. Russian spelling does not write it as a separate character here; ю expresses the combined result. This notation helps linguists compare stem patterns, but it is not required for forming or typing читаю.