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07 Verbs with Obligatory Objects
Verbs like čitati read have an optional object: you can either just read or read
something. What you actually do is the same in both cases: it’s just not specified
what you read in the first case (is it a book, newspaper, contract...)
However, there are many verbs where it’s not so, where you can either do
something to somebody (or something), or you can do it to yourself. For instance,
you can shave somebody else, or you can shave yourself. If you just ‘shave’,
Croatian treats would such sentences as ambiguous! Croatian requires an object
with such verbs.
This is an instance where something is implied in English – if you just shave, it’s
implied you do it to yourself – but not in Croatian. (There are few English verbs that
have a similar property, e.g. enjoy: you can either enjoy something or yourself – but
you have to express always what you enjoy.)
Some verbs like that are:
brijati (brije) shave
buditi waken
oblačiti put on (clothes)
prati (pere) wash
svlačiti take off (clothes)
vraćati return
With verbs brijati (brije) and prati (pere) you can shave someone or wash something
(or someone, e.g. a child):
Ana pere majicu. Ana is washing a shirt.
prati
Ana pere lice. Ana is washing her face.
prati
(Notice it’s just lice face: it’s always implied that a body part belongs to the subject.)
However, if you shave or wash yourself, you must use a special word – the ‘particle’
se. With these two verbs, it means ‘him/herself’:
Ana se pere. Ana is washing ‘herself’.
prati
Brijem se. I’m shaving.
brijati
Instead of gender specific himself and herself, Croatian has only one word: se.
However, the word a bit special, as it cannot be freely moved around, it must be the
second word in a sentence, if possible! There are more words like that in Croatian. I
will mark them with a small 2 (²), to indicate their strange behavior (e.g. se²). This
mark is similar to another mark I’ve already introduced:
¨ — glued to the following word
² — fixed to a position in a sentence
Such second-position words are usually pronounced together with the word
preceding it – there’s no pause between Ana and se² in the example above — but
are always considered separate words and spelled as separate words.®