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The Serbian Past Tense (Prošlo vreme)
(PDF version)
The past tense is used to describe some action that happened
(but not necessarily finished) in the past.
Formation of the past tense:
| FORMULA: |
PRESENT TENSE OF BITI
‘TO BE’ + PAST
PARTICIPLE |
The present tense of ‘biti’
is discussed in more details in the section that deals with
present tense of irregular verbs. For
convenience, below I provide the table of all present tense
forms of ‘biti’.
Table1: Present tense of
biti
‘to be’
| Person |
Short
(clitic) forms |
Full
(non-clitic) forms |
| Ja (I) |
sam |
jesam |
| Ti (you) |
si |
jesi |
| On/ona/ono (he/she/it) |
je |
jeste |
| Mi (we) |
smo |
jesmo |
| Vi (you) |
ste |
jeste |
| Oni/one/ona (they) |
su |
jesu |
Note: For past tense formation, you generally use
clitic (short or unaccented) forms of ‘jesam’
Table 2: Past participle endings
| Gender |
Singular |
Plural |
| Masculine |
-o
|
-li
|
| Feminine |
-la |
-le |
| Neuter |
-lo |
-la |
The above past participle endings are added to the
infinitive stems to make the past participle.
What is the infinitive stem?
Infinitive stem = infinitive verb (what is listed in
the dictionary)
minus infinitive ending: -iti/eti/ati.
Please refer to the present tense file for
more details.
Table 3: Examples of past tense conjugation of the verb
raditi – ‘to work’
| PERSON |
Masculine
|
Feminine |
Neuter |
| Ja (I) |
sam radio |
sam radila |
|
| Ti (you) |
si radio |
si radila |
|
| On/ona/ono (he/she/it) |
je radio |
je radila |
je radilo |
| Mi (we) |
smo radili |
smo radile |
|
| Vi (you) |
ste radili |
ste radile |
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| Oni/one/ona (they) |
su radili |
su radile |
su radila |
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