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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 37 Complete Reading: Perfecve Verbs 213 / 600

37 Complete Reading: Perfective Verbs

I’ve already mentioned that some Croatian verbs stand for accomplishments, while

most verbs stand for processes (there are more types, but these two are the most

common). This distinction – an essential feature of Croatian verbs – is called verbal

aspect (or grammatical aspect).

The following two sentences illustrate the essence of verbal aspect:

Jučer sam čitala knjigu A . I was reading the book yesterday. (some of it)

Jučer sam pročitala knjigu A . I read the book yesterday. (completed it)

Now, the second sentence means that you completed the reading yesterday. You

could, in principle, have started earlier, but the essential part, the accomplishment,

was done yesterday. And this is constantly expressed in Croatian: whether there was

a completion of the action or not. Using the first sentence implies there was some

reading, but not if you completed it or not.

In previous versions of this ‘course’, I translated pročitati as read through. But that’s

not accurate: read through implies careful, close reading, when you pay close

attention, or look for errors. The verb pročitati has no such implications – it just

implies the reading is completed.

Therefore, one English verb (read) corresponds to two Croatian verbs: čitati and

pročitati. So, how to make perfective verbs?

Some perfective verbs are obtained from impf. verbs just by adding a prefix.

Unfortunately, not all verbs get the same prefix. Some get po-, for instance:

imperfective verb

jesti (jede) eat

piti (pije) drink

slati (šalje) send

perfective

pojesti (pojede)

popiti (popije)

poslati (pošalje)

Since it’s important to remember both verbs, the only option is to remember verbs

in pairs. I will indicate them with the impf. verb on the left, perf. on the right,

separated by a tilde (~):

impf.

perf.

čitati ~ pročitati read

piti (pije) ~ popiti (popije) drink

To simplify things even further, if a perfective verb differs just by a prefix, I’ll show

just the prefix, e.g.:

čitati ~ pro- read piti (pije) ~ po- drink

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