24 Past Tense

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N

A

DL

G

The past tense is completely different than the present tense in Croatian. First, it’s always formed from two words, the past form of the verb and present of the verb biti (je² +) be. The past form varies according to the gender of the subject and whether it’s singular or plural.

The endings of the past form (also known as past participle, or l-participle) are not too complicated:

gender	past	past pl.
fem.	-la	-le
neut.	-lo	-la
masc.	-o ®	-li

For example, here are the past forms the verb čitati read:

gender	past	past pl.
fem.	čitala	čitale
neut.	čitalo	čitala
masc.	čitao ®	čitali

(I’ve dropped the underline on the first vowel, since it’s only important for the present tense anyway.)

Again, there’s no difference between the two masculine genders. Even better, the past forms are simply created by adding their endings to a verb after the -ti is removed. It works for many verbs with ‘irregular’ presents as well – their past is perfectly regular. It holds even for the verb biti (je² +) be:

verb	past-f	past-m
biti (je² +) be	bila	bio
pisati (piše) write	pisala	pisao
piti (pije) drink	pila	pio
plesati (pleše) dance	plesala	plesao
slati (šalje) send	slala	slao
trčati (trči) run	trčala	trčao

Also, for almost all verbs, past forms are stressed on the same syllable as the infinitive, e.g. izgledati → izgleda-la.

Past forms are similar to adjectives, and for few verbs, they can be used as true adjectives: then they get case endings, etc.

How to use it? Well, you take the right past form and the right form of the present of biti (je² +) be (keeping in mind that it should go to the second position):

Ana je plesala. Ana danced.

Ivan je čitao knjigu. Ivan read a book.

You can use personal pronouns as subjects, but it’s common not to use them:

Spavali smo u hotelu.  ▶  We slept in a hotel. {m/mixed}

There’s nothing special about the verb biti (je² +) be in the past – its past is formed as for any other verb:

Ana je bila gladna.  ▶  Ana was hungry.

Even if you are talking in the 1st or 2nd person, you must respect the gender of the subject (as with adjectives, the principle is identical):

Spavala sam.  ▶  I slept. {f}

Spavao sam.  ▶  I slept. {m}

Bila sam umorna.  ▶  I was tired. {f}

Bio sam umoran.  ▶  I was tired. {m}

Bili smo umorni.  ▶  We were tired. {m/mixed}

Since the past form indicates gender of the subject, even if pronouns are omitted in the 3rd person (and, usually, they are omitted) we know the subject sex:

Spavala je.  ▶  She slept.

Spavao je.  ▶  He slept.

If there are personal pronouns in A, G or DL that require the second position, of course they somehow clash with forms of the verb biti (je² +) be that require the same position. The rule is that present forms of the verb biti come first, except in the 3rd person, where je² comes last in the chain of second-position contenders:

Čekao sam ga.  ▶  I waited for him. {m}

Čekala si ga.  ▶  You waited for him. {to f}

Čekala ga je.  ▶  She waited for him.

If there’s a particle se², it behaves like other pronouns in A (me², ga², etc.). There’s a special rule: if je² (pres-3 of biti) would come after se², it’s almost always left out:

Bojao sam se.  ▶  I was afraid. {m}

Goran se je bojao.  ▶  Goran was afraid.

Goran se bojao.  ▶  (this form is usually used)

The verb je² – when used to form the past tense – is sometimes left out in newspaper headlines, on billboards, etc.

Don’t think about the past tense as čuo sam and like. Think about it as čuo + sam², where the auxiliary verb goes to the second position, and the past form can, in principle, be anywhere:

Goran je jednog hladnog zimskog dana čuo... On a cold winter day, Goran heard...

(Expressions like jednog hladnog zimskog dana will be explained later.) When you see an auxiliary verb, the matching past form (or an adjective) can be sometimes far away!

You have to be careful with the impersonal use of verbs. That’s whenever English uses “dummy” it, but also in impressions. From now on, I will mark all impersonal verbs in the present tense with a small circle (°):

Hladno je°. It’s cold.

Hladno mi je°. I’m cold. (lit. ‘It’s cold to me.’)

Drago nam je°. We’re glad. (lit. ‘It’s dear to us.’)

Dosta mu je°. He had enough.

All such sentences in the past tense always use neuter singular past forms:

Bilo je hladno. It was cold.

Bilo mi je hladno. I was cold. (lit. ‘It was cold to me.’)

Bilo nam je drago. We were glad. (lit. ‘It was dear to us.’)

Bilo mu je dosta. He has had enough.

Now you see why I have marked impersonal verbs in present tense with a °: it reminds you that you have to use the neuter singular in the past tense – a form that ends in -o. Of course, this is just a reminder I’ve invented for this work, nobody else uses it. Please don’t use it when you write Croatian words and sentences!

I repeat: impersonal sentences have no subjects. There have no nouns or pronouns in the nominative case. The last sentence translates literally as ‘it was enough to him’. They are always in neuter singular in the past tense. As there’s no subject, the past form defaults to its neutral, kind of genderless form.

The following sentences at the first glance look impersonal too, but they aren’t:

Ponoć je.  ▶  It’s midnight. (lit. ‘Midnight is.’)

Jutro je.  ▶  It’s morning. (lit. ‘Morning is.’)

While English sentences are impersonal, Croatian ones aren’t: in these sentences, subjects are ponoć f midnight and jutro morning, so in the past tense, past forms will get gender of subjects:

Bila je ponoć.  ▶  It was midnight. (lit. ‘Midnight was.’)

Bilo je jutro.  ▶  It was morning. (lit. ‘Morning was.’)

Another likely unexpected behavior is for sentences of the form ovo je..., to je... + noun. In such sentences, the subject isn’t to, but the noun, so the past tense adjusts to its gender:

To je mačka.  ▶  It’s a cat.

  → To je bila mačka.  ▶  It was a cat.

To je problem. That’s a problem.

  → To je bio problem. That was a problem.

To negate sentences in the past tense, just use the negative forms of present tense of biti (that is, nisam, nisi, nije, etc.):

Ana nije bila gladna. Ana wasn’t hungry.

Nisam spavao. I didn’t sleep. {m}

Nije nam bilo dosadno. We weren’t bored.

As usual, forms nisam and so on are not restricted to the second position and are commonly found right before the past form.

A special case is the negative existential construction. While it uses impersonal nema in the present tense, in the past tense, impersonal nije bilo is used:

Nema° piva.  ▶  There’s no beer.

  → Nije bilo piva.  ▶  There was no beer.

Nema° ih.  ▶  They aren’t here/there.

  → Nije ih bilo.  ▶  They weren’t here/there.

There are useful adverbs of time often used with verbs in the past tense:

davno a long time ago jučer yesterday ® malo prije moments ago

nedavno recently nekad(a) some time ago ranije earlier

The adverb nedavno means that some action or state happened at a recent period; the adverb odnedavno means something started at a recent moment (and might still be ongoing).

For example:

Ivan je jučer bio u kinu.  ▶  Ivan was at the cinema yesterday. ®

Sadly, some verbs are irregular even in the past tense; this includes all verbs having infinitives ending in -ći and most with inf. in -sti. Therefore, when such verbs are listed, they will have past-m forms listed as well after their pres-3:

jesti (jede, jeo) eat
plesti (plete, pleo) knit

(I will list the past-m and not e.g. past-f simply due to tradition of listing verb forms, and because you will find past-m’s listed in printed and online dictionaries.) The past-f is listed if it cannot be regularly obtained from the past-m; luckily, all other past forms can always be deduced from the past-f. That’s how most verbs in -ći are listed:

ići (ide, išao, išla) go
peći (peče, pekao, pekla) bake
vući (vuče, vukao, vukla) pull

Some verbs with infinitives in -sti have a bit specific past-f form as well:

gristi (grize, grizao, grizla) bite
rasti (raste, rastao, rasla) grow

To help you remember all irregular past forms, they will be shown in dark blue in examples, and you can get a small pop-up with the inf and the form name (e.g. past-m) if you place your mouse over them – or touch them, if you use a touchscreen. For example:

Ana je jelajesti
past-f.  ▶  Ana ate.

Verbs like vidjeti see – actually, all verbs ending in -jeti, including razumjeti understand – always have the following forms in the past: ®

	inf	past-m	past-f
see	vidjeti	vidio	vidjela
understand	razumjeti	razumio	razumjela

For instance:

Vidio sam Anu.  ▶  I saw Ana. {m}

Vidjela sam Anu.  ▶  I saw Ana. {f}

Razumio sam ga.  ▶  I understood him. {m}

Nismo ih razumjeli.  ▶  We didn’t understand them. {m/mixed}

This is yet another instance where past forms are more regular then the present tense. I will normally list the past forms for such verbs too, but sometimes I omit them and write just ... to make the text more compact.

Once in a while, you’ll see and hear another past tense, the aorist tense ®. It’s most common used in the first person, and its forms are just one word; for instance, the 1st person aorist form is usually obtained by replacing the infinitive -ti with -h, e.g. vidjeh I saw. For a fuller description, see 99 Aorist Tense and Other Marginal Features.

For a full discussion of various verb types, check A3 Verbs.

Finally, there are many verbs in Croatian which mean some action was brought to completion. Such verbs are rarely used in the present tense, since present tense is understood as ongoing, uncompleted, but they are frequent in the past tense. For example, the verb pročitati means read completely. In the past tense, such verbs usually correspond to simple English tenses, while normal verbs often correspond to continuous tenses:

Čitao sam knjigu.  ▶  lit. ‘I read some of the book.’ {m}

Pročitao sam knjigu.  ▶  lit. ‘I read the book completely.’ {m}

Such verbs – implying completion – are called perfective: they will be explained in depth in 37 Complete Reading: Perfective Verbs and later chapters. You will encounter some of them in examples in the following sections. For now, it’s enough to keep in mind they aren’t normally used in the present tense.

________

® The endings for past forms listed above are Standard Croatian (and Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin). In the colloquial use, many people pronounce past-m forms that end in -ao (e.g. čekao, išao, and so on) with only -o (that is, čeko, išo, etc.). You will hear such forms, and see them spelled sometimes with an apostrophe (i.e. ček’o, iš’o).

In many regions, especially in smaller towns and villages, there are other forms of past-m, e.g. ending in just -l; such dialects will be briefly introduced in later chapters.

Instead of jučer, a slightly shortened juče is used in Serbia and Bosnia. Instead of kino, the word for cinema used in Serbia and Bosnia is bioskop.

“Ekavian” forms, which dominate in Serbia, are much simpler for verbs in -jeti: from e.g. videti, past forms are video, videla, from razumeti – razumeo, razumela, etc.

In parts of Croatia and Bosnia, you often hear (and sometimes read) generalized “Ikavian” forms, where such verbs have all past endings in -i-, e.g. vidio, vidila, vidili, etc.

The aorist tense is much more common in Bosnia and Serbia.

↓ Examples (click to show)

Imala je lijepu rupicu na bradi She Had a Nice Dimple in Her Chin is a popular song from 1980’s performed by late Oliver Dragojević, a very popular Croatian pop singer. Most songs he performed were in various “Ikavian” dialects, but this is basically in standard Croatian.

Observe how the name of the song implies she from using the past-f form imala. The song is basically all in the past tense. The first verse contains osobit particular transformed into an adverb osobito particularly. The second verse contains druge, which is the feminine plural form of drugi other, another, here used as a pronoun (like other ones) but feminine, which cannot be exactly translated to English: it can be understood as other women, other girls, basically other female ones (recall 18 This and That). Plural forms will be explained in the next chapter.

Nije bila osobito lijepa	She wasn’t particularly beautiful
ali nije bila kao druge	But she wasn’t like other women
pa je ljubav, kao uvijek slijepa	So love, blind as always
zbog nje razne prelazila pruge	Crossed various tracks because of her

The third verse literally has ‘like always blind’. The fourth verse has razne pruge various tracks split by the verb! This isn’t common in speech, but not ungrammatical; it’s here for rhythmic reasons. You know the adjective refers to the noun since they match in gender (feminine), number (plural) and case (A). The word pruga means stripe, but also track (e.g. railroad).

The last line has nje, which is the so-called stressed G form of ona her: these forms are used after prepositions, such as zbog¨ + G because of. (Stressed forms of pronouns will be explained in the following chapters.)

In the chorus, the word for dimple – rupica – literally means small hole, while rupa is just hole: Croatian has many words for small versions of things. They will be described in 85 Small and Cute: Diminutives.

Imala je lijepu rupicu na bradi	She had a nice dimple in her chin
znala je da grebe, znala je da gladi	She used to scratch, she used to stroke
drhtali smo složno, smeteni i mladi	We shivered in unison, confused and young {m/mixed}
(Momčilo Popadić)

The phrase znala je da grebe is a bit ambiguous; it would be more common to say znala je grebati, which is still ambiguous; the intended meaning is likely she used to scratch; this will be explained in 32 Love and Like.

You can find various performances on YouTube™.

This is an excellent cover by Yammat (which later evolved into Detour):

And here’s the original video clip from 1986 (if you check it on YouTube™, don’t be puzzled by the description below it: it’s in Slovene, which is similar to Croatian in many aspects, but different in many words, forms, endings etc.):

Dragojević died from lung cancer in 2018.

Note how everybody sings lijepa and slijepa as just two syllables, i.e. i is not pronounced, as expected, but always written (and the strike mark is just an invention of mine to help you).

↓ Exercise (click to show)

Fill in the right forms of verbs and pronouns:

Show a pop-up Croatian keyboard

Ana . Ana was sleeping.

Goranu hladno. Goran was cold.

žao. They were sorry.

Ivan jučer ručak. Ivan cooked lunch yesterday.

dosadno. It was boring.

. We were waiting for you. {f}

kiša. It was raining.

noć. It was night.

ga . It wasn’t there. (negative existential!)

To pas. It was a dog.

. He saw us.

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