Russian Lessons: Time Schedule

Говорят, что завтра будет 
хорошая погода. [Ga-va-*ryat, 'chto 'zaf-tra 'bu-dyet kha-'ro-sha-ya pa-'go-
da.] "It is said that tomorrow the weather will be fine. 
In the past tense, 
Говорят will become Говорили (it was said).

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Paragraph 2. In the sentence 
За мной занимала какая-то женщина, the word 
занимала can be replaced by a near identical word заняла. The infinitives of these two 
words are 
занимать [za-ni-'mat'] and занять [za-'nyaf] respectively. They sound 
quite similar and they mean exactly the same: "take place". So why do they both exist? 
Russian verbs do not have Perfect tense. Instead, in order to distinguish an 
incomplete action from a complete one, they can normally be used in two different 
aspects: imperfective and perfective respectively. In the above example, the word 
занимала presents the imperfective aspect, while заняла shows the perfective one. 
The difference between them can be emphasized in translation. 
If you use the first Russian word, the correct translation will be: "Some woman 
was taking place after me." If you chose the other option, you should translate the 
sentence this way: "Some woman has taken place after me." 
Often a verb in the imperfective aspect is transferred to the perfective one by 
adding the appropriate prefix, for example: 
читать [chi-'tat'] "to read" and (про)читать [pra-chi-'tat'] "have read" 
or 
писать [pi-'sat'] "to write" and (на)писать [na-pi-'sat'] "have written." 
But even applying two different aspects of the verbs, we not always can solve a 
problem with time of an action. For example, how can you distinguish actions which 
occur repeatedly (on a regular basis) and the action which takes place right now? It is, 

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certainly, not a problem for English language - you just use two different tenses: 
simple Present and Present Continuous respectively. However, in Russian we do not 
have the Continuous form. 
Lack of the latter is normally compensated by using the appropriate adverbs 
of time, such as: