New verbs – time – adjectives

☰ New Verbs

In this lesson you encountered new verbs. Some of them follow the regular ending forms that you have already learned about in past lessons (polaziti, dolaziti) and some new forms (krenuti, stajati, trajati).

Verbs in -iti

Verbs polaziti (to depart) and dolaziti (to arrive) follow the regular pattern of -iti verbs that you already know.

Polaziti

Dolaziti

Verbs “trajati” and “stajati”

Verbs such as trajati (to last) and stajati (not to move) will not follow the -ati verb endings (even though they end in -ati). The reason for this is that, when we remove the -ati part, the stem of these verbs ends in -j- which requires the usage of -em, -eš, -e, etc. or -im, -iš, -i, etc. endings. See the chart below.

Trajati

Stajati

Difference between “stajati” and “stati”

Croatian has three different verbs that look almost identical but express three different types of “standing/stopping.” To avoid confusion, it’s useful to think about them as:

• to be standing (not moving)
• to make a stop (pause somewhere during travel)
• to come to a stop (finish movement)

Verb “krenuti”

The verb krenuti (to start your movement toward a certain place) belongs to a special group of verbs that end in -nuti (krenuti, kihnuti, etc.). In their conjugation pattern, these verbs lose the -u- in the forms for all but the third person plural form.. Look at the conjugation pattern below.

⚤ Instrumental – adj.

Adjective endings Instrumental – chart

⏰ At what time

To find out what time something is happening, Croatian uses the structure U koliko sati? This question is more specific than Kada? Which usually refers to a day (of the week) or at what part of the day. To answer the question U koliko sati, you need to use the preposition U + number + noun SAT in the genitive case. Be careful, the noun sat has an irregular form.

The noun “sat”

As you can see, there are three forms of the word sat that are used in telling time. The form of sat depends on the quantity of hours mentioned.  After the number 1, we use the form sat (Nominative singular), after the numbers 2, 3 and 4 we use the form sata (Genitive singular of sat), and after 5 (and through 20) we use the form sati (Genitive plural of sat). This pattern is standard when counting objects in Croatian. You will learn more about counting objects in Unit 8.

Official style

The 24-hour clock is used in Croatia for schedules and public announcements, in print and in the media. On the 24-hour clock in Croatian, 1pm becomes the trinaest sati (13:00) and for the hours up to dvadeset sati (20:00), we continue to use the form sati.  At 9pm or 21 hours, we say: dvadeset jedan sat, and for 22, 23, 24 we say, dvadeset dva-tri-četiri sata (back to the Genitive singular of sata).

📅 Telling the Date

This is just a quick overview! We already talked about dates/months in Unit 5.

The Croatian way to give the date is in the following order: day/month/year. To give the date, Croatian uses ordinal numbers from prvi (1st) to trideset (i) prvi (31st) together with the Genitive case of the month. Notice that the ordinal numbers are all in the masculine gender because they agree with the masculine noun dan (day). For example, [the 1st day of May] Danas je prvi svibnja.

Months In the Genitive Case

Most of the months in Croatian, in their Nominative form, have a fleeting ‘a’ (siječ-a-nj) which is lost in the Genitive case.

👨‍💻 Practice

What did we learn?

7.2.2 Zadatak 1: Glagoli

Finish the sentences with the most appropriate verb listed below. Be careful, at times you will need to use the correct form of the verb, not simply the infinitive form.

• trajati, dolaziti, putovati, polaziti, kupovati, stajati, krenuti

7.2.2 Zadatak 2: Koliko je sati?

Listen to the sentences and choose the corresponding picture.

7.2.2 Zadatak 3: Koji je datum?

Listen and choose the day and month that you hear. Note that when expressed in numbers, in Croatian we write the day first and the month second.