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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 07 Verbs with Obligatory Objects 43 / 600

zabavljati entertain zvati (zove) call

When they are used with people as objects, they have the meanings I listed above:

Ana zabavlja Gorana. Ana is entertaining Goran.

Zovem Ivana. I’m calling Ivan.

zvati

But with a se², their meaning changes:

Ana se zabavlja. Ana is having fun.

Zovem se Goran. ‘I call myself Goran.’ = My name is Goran.

zvati

The second sentence, zvati (zove) + se² is the normal way to say in Croatian what

your name is. Please pay attention that the name is in nominative, no changes to it

are made. If you know some French, Italian or Spanish, such sentences should be

very familiar to you:

(French)

(Italian)

Il s’appelle Goran.

Lui si chiama Goran. lit.

(Spanish) Él se llama Goran.

On se zove Goran.

‘He calls himself Goran.’

In all four languages, the verbs themselves mean call, but the meaning shifts when

they’re used with the so-called ‘reflexive’ pronoun (underlined in the examples

above). (Also, Spanish has the verb divertir that’s very similar to zabavljati.)

Unfortunately, English doesn’t use this pattern at all.

We can list these meanings in a nice table:

verb used with meaning

čitati (A) read

prati (pere) A wash

A entertain

zabavljati

se² have fun

A call

zvati (zove)

se² + N ... name is ...

The first verb has a non-mandatory object; the second one mandatory, and the last

two shift meaning.

Actually, if you consider again the verb return, there was also a small change in

meaning: it’s not the same to return something and to come back! There are more

such verbs where the meaning changes when they are used without an object.

Consider the following:

Goran opens the window.

The window opens.

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