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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 79 You’re Wrong and Other Phrases 447 / 600

asked. This phrase is especially frequent (where the stressed form mene is often

used instead of me², to further emphasize the point):

Ako se mene A pita°... If I’m asked... (i.e. if you want to know what I think)

This expression is also common:

Da se mene A pita°, a ne pita° me A se,...

This is rather rhetorical: if anyone asked me – but nobody does... I’d say....

Besides pitati ask, verb pairs commonly using such passive are not really common.

Some of them are:

nazivati («) ~ nazvati (nazove) call, name

prozivati («) ~ prozvati (prozove) call the roll, single out

spominjati ~ spomenuti («) mention

The first pair is used with meaning e.g. she named him Jack.

Three more phrases are simple impersonal phrases with non-trivial meanings. The

first one is:

radi° se o + DL it’s about / it’s

Some people consider this phrase colloquial. The phrase is used usually when we

want to explain what something previously discussed, but not really known, really is.

For example:

To N nije bio kit N . Radilo se o morskom psu DL . It wasn’t a whale. It was a shark.

(Yes, we use the phrase morski pas – literally sea dog – for the shark.)

As expected, the verb raditi work/do is here in neuter singular in the past. This is yet

another ‘generic’ use of this verb. A very similar expression is:

riječ je o + DL it’s about / it’s

The verb here is usually understood as having riječ f word as its subject, so in the

past it’s bila je riječ.... However, you will sometimes see it impersonal in this

expression as well (there’s a number of expressions in Croatian that have the same

property; they always have some fixed noun as the subject – recall strah me je from

69 Memories, Expectations and Fear).

Another impersonal phrase involves a common verb pair:

dolaziti ~ doći (dođe, došao, došla) + do + G come up, arise, occur

For example:

Došlo je do nesporazuma G . A misunderstanding has arisen.

doći past-n

This sounds quite formal in English, but this is an everyday expression in Croatian. It

also corresponds to come about. Instead of a noun in G, a whole content clause can

be inserted, attached to a to (in G):

1

f

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