02 Simplest Sentences

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The simplest sentences are of type Ana is sleeping or Ivan is running. Such sentences are in the present tense and in the 3rd person.

To make them in Croatian, you need the 3rd person present tense form or the verb (I’ll call it pres-3 for short).

(Verbs are words that mean an action or state, like listen, wait, eat, sit.)

Verbs are normally listed in Croatian dictionaries in the so-called infinitive form (inf for short). For most verbs, you just need to remove the ending -ti and you have the form you need now. For instance, let’s take these verbs right from a dictionary:

čitati read kuhati cook ® pjevati sing ® raditi work

plivati swim spavati sleep učiti learn, study voziti drive

It’s very easy to make simple sentences like the following:

Ana čita.  ▶  Ana is reading.

Marko kuha.  ▶  Marko is cooking.

Ivana spava.  ▶  Ivana is sleeping.

Goran uči.  ▶  Goran is studying.

Here one Croatian word (e.g. čita) really corresponds to two English words (e.g. is reading). Croatian present tense is just one word.

If you are new to learning languages, a warning: in very few instances you can just translate from English word-for-word and get a meaningful sentence in another language. For example, these two sentences in English have three words each and differ in only one word:

I am cooking.

I like cooking.

However, the matching sentences in Croatian have 1 word and 2 words respectively – and no words in common. Croatian, generally, uses less words than English in an average sentence.

If you’re now asking why the verb čitati has the first vowel underlined, if the default stress is on the first syllable anyway (e.g. voziti is stressed on the first syllable without any special mark), be patient: you will get the answer in the following chapters.

There are few verbs where you need to change the last vowel in the present tense, from a to i. One of them is:

trčati run → trči

If the pres-3 form is not straightforward, I’ll list it after the infinitive form of a verb, in parentheses. A good Croatian dictionary should list it too:

ležati (leži) lie down, recline

trčati (trči) run

For example:

Ana trčitrčati.  ▶  Ana is running.

Marko ležiležati. Marko is lying.

To help you remember all verbs where pres-3 is not simply derived by removing -ti from the inf, if you place your mouse over ‘irregular’ forms – or touch them, if you use a touchscreen – a small pop-up with the inf form will appear above them, like this:

Ana trčitrčati.

Moving your mouse (or touching somewhere else) will close the pop-up. Furthermore, such forms will be written in dark blue. Try it yourself in the two examples above!

There are more verbs where you have to remember the present form, but it’s not a simple change of a vowel; it again should be listed in a dictionary (you can call such verbs ‘irregular’). For such verbs, the pres-3 form almost always ends in -e:

jesti (jede) eat pisati (piše) write piti (pije) drink

plakati (plače) cry plesati (pleše) dance ® skakati (skače) jump

Again, for all such verbs with present forms in -e, you can get a pop-up by placing a mouse over them, or touching them.

(Recall that in words like pije, ije is pronounced as two syllables, since it comes at the very end: pi-je.) Let’s put these forms to use:

Ana jedejesti.  ▶  Ana is eating.

Marko pišepisati.  ▶  Marko is writing.

Ivana plešeplesati. Ivana is dancing.

Goran plačeplakati. Goran is crying.

Instead of names, you can use the following pronouns:

on  ▶  he

ona  ▶  she

For example:

Ona jedejesti.  ▶  She’s eating.

On plačeplakati.  ▶  He’s crying.

You can even leave out the pronoun if it’s obvious who you’re talking about:

Plačeplakati. He/she is crying.

That’s fine, but how do you say I’m eating or I’m cooking? Such sentences are in the 1st person. Croatian does not use personal pronouns (I, you...) often, the preferred way is just to use a special verb form. (This is actually common in most languages: English, German and French obligatory pronoun is an exception, from the standpoint of the majority of languages in the world.)

It turns out that for almost all verbs, you just need to add an -m to the pres-3 form to get the pres-1 form you now need:

Čitam.  ▶  I’m reading.

Kuham. I’m cooking.

Učim. I’m studying.

(This is also possible in English, but only colloquially, e.g. hope this helps. However, the sentences above are not considered colloquial at all in Croatian! Croatian simply uses pronouns only in specific circumstances, which will be described later.)

This works regardless of the verbs being ‘irregular’ or not:

Jedemjesti.  ▶  I’m eating.

Pišempisati.  ▶  I’m writing.

Plešemplesati. I’m dancing.

Pijempiti.  ▶  I’m drinking.

Since pijem is derived from pije, the pronunciation of ije is the same as in pije – it’s pronounced clearly as two syllables: pi-jem. This holds to all similar verbs as well. ®

A Croatian dictionary could list either pres-3 forms or pres-1 forms for the ‘irregular’ verbs, but it’s easy to distinguish them, since they end in different letters (almost all pres-1 forms end in an -m: for just two irregular verbs they end in -u).

We can introduce two useful words to add information to such sentences (they are both adverbs):

još  ▶  still

već  ▶  already

We can put them in front of the verb to say that something is still ongoing or it has already started:

Ana već spava.  ▶  Ana is already sleeping.

Goran još plačeplakati. Goran is still crying.

The adverb još, when used in this role, is often emphasized as još uvijek, giving it a bit stronger meaning:

Ana još uvijek plešeplesati. Ana is still dancing.

This is a bit colloquial. It’s usually pronounced as u-vjek, since the ije does not appear at the very end (and so I marked it).

If you’re now asking how to say I write or Ana sleeps, there’s no such difference in Croatian: pišem means both I’m writing and I write.

Note. If a verb has an irregular pres-3, please learn the inf as well, even if you don’t need it right now: you’ll need it a bit later, for the past and the future tenses.

________

® In most of Serbia, and in the prevailing variant of Standard Serbian, most words that have -ije- or -je- in Croatian, have -e- instead, e.g. instead of pjevati, the verb is pevati. That’s called “Ekavian pronunciation” (the name is misleading – it’s not just a matter of pronunciation, since spelling follows the pronunciation).

However, forms like pjevati, called “Ijekavian” are also standard in Serbian (as another standard variant) and you can occasionally read articles written in “Ijekavian” in newspapers from Serbia. I will not mark all such words. In most cases, if you want to obtain them, just replace -ije- or -je- in Croatian with -e-. Exceptions will be marked: one of them are present forms of the verb piti, which are pijem, pije also in Serbia. You can find more about “Ekavian” in A9 Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin.

In most coastal areas of Croatia, but not in the very south (i.e. Dubrovnik area) most words that have -ije- or -je- in Standard Croatian, have -i- instead, e.g. instead of pjevati, the verb is pivati. That’s called “Ikavian pronunciation”. You will find it in casual writing, some novels, movies and pop songs.

Instead of kuhati, the form kuvati is used in Serbia, and in parts of Bosnia and Croatia (however, it’s not standard in Croatian).

In Serbia, meaning dance is usually expressed with the verb igrati which has other meanings (play) in both Croatia and Serbia.

↓ Something Possibly Interesting (click to show)

English is a distant cousin to Croatian and related languages. This will mostly be of interest to language geeks. However, it can also help you remember things.

For example, the -m in the Croatian 1st person is related to the English I am — thousands of years ago, a long lost language which was the common ancestor of both languages had the -m in the first person form of some verbs. This consonant has survived literally thousands of years.

Russian is a much closer cousin. For example, the Russian verb meaning write has inf писать, and the pres-3 пишет. If we would spell these words using Croatian characters, it would be p’isаt’ (p’išet), which is almost identical to Croatian. However, the pres-1 is p’išu. Russian has overall a bit more complex forms of words when compared to Croatian.

↓ Exercise (click to show)

Use the following verbs:

sjediti sit

zijevati yawn

and the verbs you have already learned, to fill in right verb forms and adverbs:

Show a pop-up Croatian keyboard

Goran . Goran is yawning.

. I’m crying.

Ana . Ana is already sitting.

. I’m still sleeping.

. She’s running.

. He’s already crying.

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