smetati (to bother / disturb)

Smetati ("to bother, disturb, get in the way") looks like a simple transitive verb, but its grammar is turned inside out compared with English. In English I bother you — I am the subject, you are the object. In Croatian the thing that bothers is the nominative subject and the person who is bothered sits in the dative: Smeta mi buka — literally "the noise is-bothering to-me". This is the same dative-experiencer inversion you met in nedostajati and sviđati se, and once the flip clicks, a whole family of verbs becomes transparent. A second, very useful idiom hides here too: ne smeta mi = "I don't mind".

Aspect

Smetati is imperfective. Bothering is by nature an ongoing state or repeated nuisance, so the imperfective carries almost all the work. There is a prefixed perfective zasmetati ("to start bothering / bother momentarily"), but it is rare; in everyday speech you will use smetati in the present, past, and future, all imperfective.

Present tense

Smetati is a regular a-class verb: stem smeta- + -m, -š, -∅, -mo, -te, -ju. All six persons exist because the subject — the thing that bothers — can be any person, including you and I (you can be the one bothering someone).

In practice the workhorse forms are the 3rd-person smeta (one thing bothers) and smetaju (several things bother) — most nuisances are "it" or "they". But the 1st and 2nd persons matter for the politest sentence in the whole entry: Smetam li ti? ("Am I bothering you?").

The experiencer is dative

The bothered person is the dative, almost always a second-position clitic: mi (me), ti (you), mu (him), joj (her), nam (us), vam (you pl.), im (them).

For a named experiencer, use a dative noun: Ani smeta dim ("the smoke bothers Ana", dative Ani). This is the same dative-experiencer machinery covered at dative with verbs and adjectives.

The l-participle

Regular for the -ati infinitive. It agrees with the subject (the bother-source), not with the experiencer — so even a woman saying the noise bothered her uses feminine smetala only because buka is feminine, never because of her own gender.

Perfect tense (perfekt)

The auxiliary je / su agrees in number with the bother-source; the participle agrees in gender and number with it; the dative experiencer rides along as a clitic.

Future I (futur prvi)

The infinitive drops its -i before the clitic: smetat će. Watch the spelling — it is smetat ću, never smetati ću.

Imperative

The imperative of smetati is practically nonexistent as a command to bother someone. What you hear all the time is the negative imperative Ne smetaj! ("Don't disturb [me]!" / "Leave me alone!"), and the polite Ne smetajte!. These are everyday and worth knowing as set phrases.

Conditional I (kondicional prvi)

The bih-clitics + l-participle, agreeing with the bother-source. Useful for tactful hypotheticals — would it bother you if…

Other forms

• Passive participle: none in normal use — smetati is functionally intransitive (the experiencer is dative, not accusative, so there is nothing to passivise).
• Present verbal adverb: smetajući ("[while] bothering") exists but is rare.

Key uses and government

1. The core pattern: dative experiencer + nominative subject

The fixed skeleton is [dative experiencer] + smeta/smetaju + [nominative bother-source]. Internalise it as a template, exactly as you did for nedostajati and sviđati se. The verb agrees with the bother-source; the experiencer is a dative clitic in second position.

2. Ne smeta mi — "I don't mind"

This is the single most useful idiom built on smetati. Negated, it is the standard, idiomatic way to say "I don't mind / it's fine by me" — far more natural than any literal translation.

3. smetati in the way — physical obstruction

Beyond annoyance, smetati also means "to be in the way / get in the way of". The thing in the way is the subject; the person it obstructs is dative.

4. With a da-clause or infinitive subject

The bother-source need not be a noun — it is often a whole clause: Smeta mi da… or Smeta mi što… ("it bothers me that…"), or an infinitive. For the choice between a da-clause and an infinitive, see da vs the infinitive.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Smetati is a dative-experiencer verb: the bother-source is the nominative subject, the bothered person is in the dative (clitic mi/ti/mu/joj…).
• The verb agrees with the bother-source: smeta (sg.) vs smetaju (pl.); the participle agrees too (smetao dim, smetala buka).
• Smetam li ti? = "Am I bothering you?" — note you can be the subject.
• ne smeta mi = "I don't mind" — the most useful idiom on this page.
• It is imperfective (rare perfective zasmetati); future drops the -i: smetat ću, never smetati ću.