EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 53 Giving Orders 309 / 600
Neka Ana N vozi. Let Ana drive.
The word neka doesn’t change. It has no connection to neki adj. some. You will
sometimes see and hear it shortened to nek.
What about impf. and perf. verbs in negative imperatives? In many cases, perf.
verbs make no sense in negative imperative. Consider this:
Nemoj pročitati knjigu A . Don’t read the book. (perf. = the whole book)
It would mean: you can read the book, just don’t read the whole book. Makes no
sense. However, it makes sense with some other verbs and objects:
Nemoj jesti kolače A . Don’t eat the cakes. (impf. = not even a tiny bit)
Nemoj pojesti kolače A . Don’t eat up the cakes. (perf. = not all of them)
The first sentence means don’t even start eating them, while the second one means
don’t finish the cakes, i.e. leave something. This example is also interesting:
Nemoj bacati knjige A u smeće A . Don’t throw books into the trash. (impf. = any book,
anytime)
Nemoj baciti knjigu A u smeće A . Don’t throw the book into the trash. (perf. = a
specific instance/book)
(I’ve used nemoj to negate impf. imperatives, but I could have used ne bacaj and ne
jedi in the previous example instead).
The first sentence is about throwing any books, or an unspecified group: you can
throw one today, another the next day, etc. It forbids any throwing. The second one
is about throwing a specific book, which can be thrown only once, and then it’s gone.
In other circumstances, we would use bacati even for a specific object – you can
throw a specific ball many times against a wall.
The rule is: when we do something to a specific object – something irreversible, so it
can be done only once – we use perf. verbs in negative imperative.
For example, we don’t want somebody open a window. Since windows can be open,
and then easily closed, and open again, and we don’t want any of it, we would use
an impf. verb:
Nemoj otvarati prozor A . Don’t open the window. (impf.)
But, for breaking a specific window, we would use a perf. verb, since it’s an
irreversible action (true, windows can be repaired, but it cannot be done
immediately):
Nemoj razbiti prozor A . Don’t break the window. (perf.)
Contrary, if we would speak in general, not about a specific window, or a specific set
of them, we would use an impf. verb:
Nemoj razbijati prozore A . Don’t break windows. (impf.)