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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 25 Plural 148 / 600

There are few verbs – otherwise irregular – that have a bit irregular pres-3pl as well.

They end in -ći in infinitive, have pres-3 in -če, but the pres-3pl in -ku. Common ones

are:

peći (peče) bake → peku

teći (teče) flow → teku

tući (tuče) beat, smack → tuku

vući (vuče) pull → vuku

If a verb has pres-3 in -če, but its infinitive ends in -ti, there’s no such complication:

the pres-3pl is completely regular:

vikati (viče) yell → viču

What about feminine nouns in a consonant? It’s quite simple – they just get an -i in

their N-pl, and the accusative is the same as nominative:

Noći N su duge N . Nights are long.

f

Now, there’s a small problem. Croatian has usually specific words for male and

female people/animals – pairs like prijatelj friend (m) and prijateljica friend (f).

How do you call a group of friends, if some of them are male, some female?

Croatian has then a notion of default gender. For most terms, the default gender is

masculine. You simply use the masculine noun in plural, but the meaning is rather

generic or mixed.

However, for some animals, the default gender is feminine. Such animals are:

feminine masculine

cow krava

bik bull

vol ox

fox lisica lisac (lisc-)

cat mačka mačak (mačk-)

duck patka patak (patk-)

(There are more.) So, if you see a bunch of cats, either of mixed sex, or you don’t

know their sex, you simply refer to them as if all were feminine.

Let’s summarize changes of feminine (and all nouns that end in -a) and neuter nouns

in plural:

noun type (N)

NA-pl

nouns in -a (≈ fem.) -a → -e

neuter nouns (≈ in -o, -e) -o or -e → -a

fem. not in -a (e.g. noć) add -i

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