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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 64 The Door Opens: Fun with se² 375 / 600

(French) Ça ne se fait pas. lit. It’s not done.

To N se ne radi. = People don’t do that.

Sometimes, such sentences don’t have any subject (as some verbs, e.g. go don’t

permit an object), so English sentences must use people, they or some other way.

Such sentences are impersonal in Croatian, so neuter singular forms must be used in

the past:

Ovdje se ne puši°. There’s no smoking here. (lit. ‘It’s not smoked here.’)

Nekad se često išlo u kino A . People were going to cinema often.

ići past-n

Puno se popilo. They drank a lot.

(Spanish uses again exactly the same construction, the first sentence corresponds to

aquí no se fuma, which has only a slightly different word order.)

For example, this sign on a small diner in Zagreb says lit. ‘at our place it’s eaten the

best’ = people eat here the best:

German again has the same feature (but with werden-passive), while Swedish has

the -s passive here:

(German)

(Swedish)

Es wurde die ganze Nacht getanzt.

Det dansades hela natten.

Plesalo se cijelu noć A .

lit. ‘It was danced all night.’

All three sentences mean, of course, they/people were dancing all night. Please

remember such sentences are impersonal in Croatian, i.e. no subject is allowed in

them. (Latin also uses passive impersonally, e.g. in Virgil Sic itur ad astra.)

Often, content clauses are subject of such sentences, English again uses the dummy

it, and passives with some verbs (content sentences behave as neuter singular

subjects, exactly as to):

Čini se da… It seems that…

Može se reći da… It can be said that...

moći pres-1

Vjeruje se da… It’s believed that...

vjerovati

Očekuje se da… It’s expected that...

očekivati

Činilo se da… It seemed that…

Moglo se reći da… It could be said that...

moći past-n

The sentences above look impersonal, but the content clauses are actually subjects.

Since the clauses are neither nouns nor pronouns, the verb goes to neuter singular in

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