EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 02 Simplest Sentences 16 / 600
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:
Jedem. I’m eating.
jesti
Pišem. I’m writing.
pisati
Plešem. I’m dancing.
plesati
Pijem. I’m drinking.
piti
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 plače. Goran is still crying.
plakati
The adverb još, when used in this role, is often emphasized as još uvijek, giving it a
bit stronger meaning:
Ana još uvijek pleše. Ana is still dancing.
plesati
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.
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 tense.
________
® 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).