Oversimplifying Serbian Verbs
In this article, you’ll learn how to conjugate Serbian verbs in just 3 minutes. Two main factors will make it possible:
- Continuous tenses don’t exist: there’s no explicit distinction between events happening at a specific instant or during a time window. So, no Imparfait 🇫🇷, no Gerúndio 🇵🇹, no Future Continuous 🇬🇧. Just the 3 primitive notions of time: Past, Present and Future.
- Past and Future tenses use a long form based on the “to be” verb: if you think 3 tenses are still too many, there’s some good news. For regular verbs, the Past and Future tenses are just expressions combining the verb “to be” with the participle or the infinitive forms of the verb you are conjugating.
Bonus: this article is also valid to what’s known as Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin languages. You don’t need to change a single letter.
The master diagram
Let’s introduce two verbs:
- biti / бити: to be. The main verb of Serbian language.
- imati / имати: to have. Our example of a regular verb.
Now, let’s conjugate them:
Let’s go through the diagram:
- Infinitiv: usually finishes with -ti. I’ll name the rest of it as the Radikal — my own nomenclature.
- Particip: there are 3 genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) with the respective singular and plural variations: on/ona/ono (he/she/it) and oni/one/ona (they).
- Prezent of biti: you can use both ja sam or jesam, ti si or jesi, ono je or jeste etc.
- Prošlo(Past) of biti: just combine the Prezent of biti with its Particip: on je bio, vi ste bile etc. The opposite order also works: bio je, bile ste etc.
- Prošlo(Past) of imati or any regular verb: combine the Prezent of biti with the Particip of imati. You can also invert the order as done before. E.g.: ona je imala or imala je.
- Futur of imati or any regular verb: combine the Futur of biti with the Infinitiv of imati. E.g.: ja ću imati, vi ćete imati etc. Some inversion logic also applies here, but this time based on the Radikal of imati. E.g.: imaću, imaćete etc. The latter alternative is more likely to be irregular in other verbs. E.g.: ješćemo for jesti (to eat), ići ću for ići (to go) etc.
So, by simply learning the Prezent and Futur tenses of biti, you’ll be able to use any regular verb if you know: (i) the 6 persons of its Prezent tense and (ii) the 6 forms of its Aktiv Particip. You’ll definitely find some small irregularities on the way, but will be almost there.
The next level
Congratulations! Now you know 90% of Serbian verbs conjugation. You can stop here.
However, if you want to go one step further and reach 99%, you just need to learn the Imperativ and Kondicional tenses.
Some comments:
- Imperativ: as in any other language, it only exists for ti, mi and vi persons.
- (almost) Aorist of biti: the Aorist tense is something that I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶i̶d̶e̶a̶ is out of the scope of this article, but the Kondicional tense is dependent on a variation of this tense in which the 3rd person of the plural changes from biše to simply bi.
- Kondicional: analogous to the Prošlo composition, but using the (almost) Aorist tense. E.g.: ti bi imala or imala bi, mi bismo imali or imali bismo etc.
Becoming a Poet
If you want to become a Serbian poet, you might need to explore the 1% left. In this case, check SerboVerb out.
