No. 24 in Russian
было
"Было" - "was" or "there was."
In a sentence
Вчера было холодно.
Yesterday it was cold.
past tense indication of the state 'it was'.
Было бы лучше остаться дома.
It would have been better to stay at home.
conditional mood 'it would have been' indicating potential situation.
Тут было много людей.
There were many people here.
past tense indication of existence 'there were'.
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “было” in actual Russian podcasts.
Find “было” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Russian podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into русский, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Russian books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).