⚙️ 10 | 3 | Lekcija 1: Nogometna utakmica – Gramatika

Was built, was founded…

When we want to express that something was built or founded – we need to use the Passive Voice. Keep in mind, the passive voice is not that widely used in everyday speech. However, it is very common in official written documents, news articles, and official speech. In today’s lesson you have encountered two verbs in their passive form: osnovati (to establish) and izgraditi (to build).

The passive voice

It can only be created from intransitive verbs (i.e., verbs that take the Accusative case). The passive voice is created by using the verb biti in its present tense form and the passive form of the main verb. The passive form of the verb is usually created from the infinitive form, and reflects grammatical information, like gender (masculine, neuter, feminine) and number (singular and plural) because it needs to agree with the subject of the sentence.

Verbs that end in –ati

Most of the verbs that end in –ati will have the following structure.

Verbs that end in –iti

The verbs that end in –iti can take two different sets of endings for the passive construction.

Set #1

If we use the first set of endings for –iti verbs, no changes occur in the passive form of the verb.

Set #2

The use of the second set of endings for –iti verbs will trigger a sound change and the infinitive form of the verb will be slightly changed. For example: The museum Mimara was built in 1987. ⇒ Muzej Mimara je izgrađen 1987.

Sound change: We add the masculine ending -jen to the infinitive form of the verb izgraditi (izgrad–) The letter –d–, when combined with the letter –j– (izgrad+jen), will result in a sound change, producing the new sound –đ– that appears in the passive form.