Хобби на русском: глагол любить и суффиксы ОВА, ЕВА

How do Russian verbs ending in -овать conjugate?

In Russian, a large and very common class of verbs ending in -овать or -евать follows the same conjugation shortcut: drop that suffix and add -ую. So рисовать (to draw) becomes рисую, фотографировать (to photograph) becomes фотографирую, and путешествовать (to travel) becomes путешествую. This one pattern covers dozens of common hobby and activity verbs that otherwise look unpredictable.

The teacher in this clip names the pattern explicitly: “Это глаголы с суффиксами -ова или -ева... И каждый раз мы меняем ово на у” — every time, we swap -ово for -у. Five hobby verbs demonstrate it back-to-back: рисовать, фотографировать, танцевать, планировать, путешествовать — all collapse to the same -ую ending in the first person. The pattern also holds in second and third person: the -ова/-ева drops out and standard First Conjugation endings (-уешь, -ует, -уем, -уете, -уют) attach directly to what remains. A few short verbs that merely end in those letters behave differently — жевать → жую, клевать → клюю — so treat this as the dominant pattern, not an absolute rule. But once you see it, forms like танцует or планирует stop looking arbitrary.