EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 40 Future Tense 236 / 600
In fact, there are some constructions in Croatian where you have to use the verb
(bude). They will be introduced a bit later.
In colloquial speech, especially in northwestern Croatia, including Zagreb, both are
often used in ordinary sentences, interchangeably with the standard future forms.
Then the verb (bude) is simply understood as the future form of the verb biti be. So
you will often hear (and sometimes read):
Budemo išli u školu A . (colloq. NW Croatia) We’ll go to school.
This is by no means standard, and such use is restricted to just a part of Croatia
(arguably, with about a half of the total population of Croatia).
One final remark: the potential future tense is usually, in textbooks, known as the
‘exact’ future tense or future II. I think these are quite confusing names, so I’ve
invented another name which makes more sense to me.
________
® You will sometimes see in Bosnia, occasionally in casual writing in Croatia, and
ići past-mpl
always in Serbia, that in such a case, these two words are spelled fused together and
the t is left out; verbs that end in -sti in infinitive change the consonant s → š:
Biće hladno. It will be cold.
Ješću. I’ll eat. (← jest + ću)
However, this is merely a (weird) spelling. Word order rules still apply, of course, so,
effectively, Serbian words like biće and ješću are limited to the first position in the
sentence!
It never happens anywhere (at least in standard languages!) to verbs having
infinitives in -ći.
Additionally, it’s very common in Serbia, usually in speech, to use da + present tense
instead of the infinitive:
Ana N će da jede. Ana will eat.
While the same forms of the verbs biti and (bude) are used in Serbia, Serbian
grammars traditionally classify bude as the present tense of biti, and present tense
forms (je²) as another verb (referred by the form jesam), having no infinitive.
While it’s true that bude-forms sometimes replace je²-forms, regarding je² as a verb
different than biti is just absurd. Unfortunately, some materials for foreigners on the
Internet repeat this bizarre approach.
A likely background for such approach is that when da + present tense is used
instead of the infinitive biti, bude is used instead of je²:
Ana N će da bude gladna N . Ana will be hungry.
You’ll later see the exact circumstances when bude-forms replace je²-forms.
jesti