EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 26 Yes or No? 154 / 600
Jel se bojao? (colloq.) Was he afraid?
Also, colloquially, it’s possible to turn normal sentences into a question just by
changing their intonation – sentences end on a higher tone, and are spoken faster –
no rearrangement of any kind is needed:
Ideš u školu A ? (colloq.)
ići
Gledala si film A ? (colloq.)
Bojao se? (colloq.)
However, with just the present forms of biti (je² +), there are questions like this
often heard:
Jeste gladni N ? (colloq.)
All the ways of making questions described above are used in real life, unlike some
formal terms that actually nobody uses (e.g. formal hladnjak vs. colloq. frižider
fridge). For example, here are some statistics (by Google search) from the
Croatian discussion site, forum.hr:
form hits
jesi li gledala 3280
da li si gledala 1420
jesi gledala 11800
There’s another, special type of questions, asking for advice or an opinion. In English,
such questions begin with Should I... or something like it. In Standard Croatian, you
can start such questions with da li da + present, but that works for the present tense
only:
Da li da gledam taj film A ? Should I watch that movie?
In the past tense, you have to use the verb trebati need/should + verb in infinitive;
questions follow the same pattern as any other yes/no question:
Jesam li trebala gledati taj film A ? Should I have watched that movie?
(How to use infinitives will be explained a bit later.)
Colloquially, da li is very often left out in such opinion questions, and you’ll most of
the time hear and see just:
Da gledam taj film A ? (colloq.) Should I watch that movie?
Sometimes you’ll hear jel instead of da li even in opinion questions:
Jel da gledam taj film A ? (colloq.) Should I watch that movie?
Such opinion questions are often answered with conditionals and imperatives – verb
forms I haven’t introduced yet. (For conditionals, check as 39 Would, Could:
Conditionals; for imperatives, see 53 Giving Orders.)