EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 04 No, Oen, Probably and Again 24 / 600
04 No, Often, Probably and Again
We now know how to say Ana is watching TV, but how to say Ana isn't watching TV?
It is quite simple: just put a word ne¨ right before the verb. This is the default and
main way to make negation in Croatian (in English, you can also put no right in front
of a noun, e.g. I need no coffee, but it does not work in Croatian):
Ana ne gleda televiziju. Ana isn’t watching TV.
Ne trebam kavu. I don’t need coffee.
According to the Standard pronunciation, the word ne¨ is pronounced together with
the verb that follows it, and for many verbs – but not for all – the ne¨ gets stressed
instead of the verb. That almost never happens in the ‘western’ pronunciation,
where the stress almost never moves in such circumstances. We could therefore
write the above combination as ne-gleda.
If you want to follow the Standard stress scheme, how to find out if the stress
moves to ne¨ or not? Just look if the verb has (in my markings!) any underline. This
explains why I have underlined the first syllables of some verbs:
Standard stress when ne¨ is before a verb
ne + gleda the stress moves to ne
ne + čita no shift: the stress stays on či
ne + razgovara no shift: the stress stays on go
In the ‘western’ scheme, which is much simpler, the stress doesn’t even move from
gleda. It that scheme, it moves mostly from the very short verbs, like znati know,
and there’s only few of them. In the city of Rijeka and the region around it, the
stress usually doesn’t move, even from such short verbs.
The two dots (¨) after the ne¨ are just a reminder that this word must be placed
always right before the verb, and that it gets pronounced together with the verb;
they are just my markings, of course they are not normally written, please don’t
write them when you write in Croatian.
The verb imati have behaves a bit specially: its present tense forms get always fused
with ne¨ into nema, nemam, etc.:
Nemam čašu. I don’t have a glass.
Croatian has two words that correspond to English glass (to drink from, not what is
used for windows) and cup, and they divide the world a bit differently:
čaša glass, (paper) cup (no handle)
šalica cup, mug (has a handle) ®
Basically, čaša is made of glass or some thin material (e.g. plastic, paper) and šalica