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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 38 Needs, Wishes and Intenons 220 / 600

38 Needs, Wishes and Intentions

Let’s now see how to say I want to sleep or Ana intends to go to Zagreb. Such

expressions are quite simple in Croatian. You should use one of verbs of desire and

intent:

morati must

namjeravati («) intend

planirati («) plan

pokušavati («) try

trebati need/should

željeti (želi, želio, željela) wish

All these verbs are imperfective, and have no perfective verbs related to

accomplishments. (You’ll see later that, in fact, there are a few weird perfective

verbs related to some of the verbs above, but they don’t stand for

accomplishments.) For example, if you wish/must/intend to eat an apple, you should

simply say:

Želim jesti jabuku A . I want to eat an apple. ®

Moram jesti jabuku A . I must eat an apple.

Namjeravam jesti jabuku A . I intend to eat an apple.

What you want/intend to eat is still in the accusative case: only the wished/intended

action is expressed in the infinitive form. Since the infinitive form is the form listed

in dictionaries, that’s not complicated at all.

Colloquially, there’s another verb that’s often used to express intentions:

misliti (+ inf) (colloq.!) intend

This verb literally means think, but with infinitives, it can be used like this:

Mislimo ići na plažu A . (colloq.!) We intend to go to the beach.

There’s nothing special about the past tense, just use the verb in the past instead of

present, the other verb stays in inf:

Željela sam jesti jabuku A . I wanted to eat an apple. (I = female)

Morao sam jesti jabuku A . I had to eat an apple. (I = male)

Now, if you intend to accomplish something, you should use a perfective verb in inf:

Želim pojesti jabuku A . I want to eat an apple. (the whole apple)

Želim pročitati knjigu A . I want to read the book. (the whole book)

Želim pročitati prvo poglavlje A . I want to read the first chapter. (the whole chapter)

Of course, if you don’t intend to read the whole book, or any defined part of it (like,

a chapter) but just engage in that activity, use the imperfective verb:

Želim čitati knjigu A . I want to read the book. (a bit of it)

Therefore, use of perfective or imperfective verbs makes such statements much

more precise in Croatian. With some actions, perfective verbs are basically always

used, such as:

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