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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 39 Would, Could: Condionals 230 / 600

Another example:

Želim kupiti majicu A . I want to buy a T-shirt. (not polite)

Želio bih kupiti majicu A . (much more polite)

Kupio bih majicu A . (also polite)

Actually, most often desires are expressed using conditionals (these are examples

for the masc. gender in 1st person – I hope you are able to work out others):

Volio bih...

Htio bih... I’d like...

Želio bih...

As you see, the verb voljeti (voli,...) love shifts its meaning in conditional a bit –

there’s no real difference in meaning of the three verbs above in conditional. (I’ll

explain various ways to use the verb voljeti (voli,...) love in conditional in 56 Desires

and Demands.)

When the verb trebati need is put into conditional and used with another verb in

infinitive, it’s just a bit softened, and usually means should:

Trebala bih spavati. I should sleep. ®

Trebala bi spavati. You should sleep. (or She should...)

It’s possible to soften any verb with conditional:

Morao bih jesti. I would have to eat.

Sometimes, the conditional verb is used just like a regular verb, for every desire, not

just with verbs (it’s quite informal, children mostly talk like that):

Ja N bih čokoladu A . (colloq.) ‘I’d a chocolate.’ = I’d like a chocolate.

What if we have more than one second-position word? Then the conditional verb is

placed before everything else that also requires the second place (that is, words like

me², se², etc.):

Ivan N bi me A trebao zvati. Ivan should call me.

Goran N bi se igrao. Ivan would like to play.

If you want to express negative conditional, just place a ne¨ in front of the

conditional verb. These two words must then stay together and are usually found

right before the past form:

Ne bih mogla jesti. I couldn’t eat.

moći past-f

Ivan me A ne bi trebao zvati. Ivan shouldn’t call me.

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Goran se ne bi igrao. Ivan wouldn’t like to play.

The negation with the conditional verb behaves like one word that can be placed

anywhere, despite being spelled as two words. Since the conditional verb is short

(one syllable) the stress shifts to ne¨ even in the ‘western’ stress scheme (as

indicated by the underlines above). As a result, you’ll sometimes see (non-standard)

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