hello croatian speakers❤️ I was wondering if you could explain to me how the past tenses work in croatian 🇭🇷 🙏

See a translation

@marlena18 The most used past tenses in Croatian are "perfekt" and "pluskvamperfekt". There are also "imperkeft" and "aorist" but those are very archaic and found mostly in old literature, not everyday conversation.

Perfekt

This is how you do it with regular verbs:

"glagolski pridjev radni" (infinitive - ti + o/la/li/le) + short version of verb "biti" (to be)

Side note: glagolski pridjev radni means something like "working verbal adjective" and doesn't exist in English. It's used to make the past tense. There is also "glagolski pridjev trpni" which is like past participle (vrata su otvorena - the door is open).

Anyways, back to perfekt...


raditi (to work)

Singular
• radio/radila sam - I (male/female) worked
• radio/radila si - you worked
• radio/radila je - he/she worked

Plural
• radili/radile smo - we (male/female) worked
• radili/radile ste - you worked
• radili/radile su - they worked

The short version of "biti" comes on the second place in the sentence and directly after conjunctions:

• Jučer sam radio. - I worked/was working yesterday.
• Bilo je vruće, ali sam radio. - It was hot, but I worked/was working.

Notice that there is no difference between past simple and past continuous in Croatian. You make it out of the context.

Pluskvamperfekt

perfekt of "biti" + short version of "biti" + glagolski pridjev radni

Singular
• bio/bila sam radio/radila. - I had worked
• bio/bila si radio/radila - you had worked
• bio/bila je radio/radila - he/she had worked

Plural
• bili/bile smo radili/radile - we had worked
• bili/bile ste radili/radile - you had worked
• bili/bile su radili/radile - they had worked

Needless to say, female and male forms need to match when you're making a sentence.

Pluskvamperfekt is used when something happened before something else in the past.

• Bila sam radila kada je počela padati kiša. - I had been working when rain started to fall.


One last thing I forgot to mention is -lo which is neuter form.

• Radilo je. - It worked
• Bilo je vruće - It was hot.