It's best to tackle this answer in stages: 1. There are separate categories of "to go" in Russian and other Slavic languages for walking on foot, strolling, cl

It's best to tackle this answer in stages: 1. There are separate categories of "to go" in Russian and other Slavic languages for walking on foot, strolling, climbing, running, crawling, flying, going by vehicle, swimming and probably a few more I'm forgetting. The method of locomotion is baked into the verb. You can read some examples here if the nerdery interests you: http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/verbs_motion.php http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/verbs_motion.php 2. Each of these verbs comes in a pair. One is unidirectional, the other is multidirectional. The difference in usage is more subtle than these names suggest, but that's the general idea. 3. You have a ton of prefixes you can stick onto these verbs to indicate action into, through, around, to-and-back, and so on. 4. There's other verbs you use if you carried or conveyed something somewhere. Points 2 and 3 apply to them, too. 5. These verbs also have aspect, but you've suffered enough. So the choice of verb of motion in a sentence like "I took something there" encodes a lot of meaning, and is as intuitive to native speakers as the proper usage of "the" and "a" is to English speakers—you know exactly how to use it correctly, but good luck trying to articulate the rules to yourself or to people learning the language if you haven't gotten special training.