The Imperfect (imperfekt) | Croatian Grammar

The imperfekt is a synthetic (one-word) past tense built only from imperfective verbs, expressing a past action seen as ongoing, durative, or repeated — roughly the territory of English "was doing" or "used to do." You should know one thing about it before anything else: in modern Croatian it is dead as a productive form. Unlike the aorist, which still flickers through colloquial speech and headlines, the imperfect survives only in older literature, religious texts, folk poetry, and deliberate archaic stylisation. The honest pedagogy here is therefore recognition only: learn to parse it when you meet it on the page, and never feel any pressure to produce it. Anything you would want to say with an imperfect, a living speaker says with the perfekt of an imperfective verb (radio sam, "I was working / I used to work").

💡

This is a reading skill, not a speaking skill. No native speaker under retirement age uses the imperfekt in ordinary conversation, and many never use it at all. Resources that drill the full imperfect paradigm for production are spending your effort on a tense you will never need to speak. Recognise it; do not rehearse it.

What it once meant

The imperfekt and the aorist split the old past between them by aspect. The aorist reported a single completed event (perfective: napisah, "I wrote / I had written it"); the imperfect painted a background of ongoing or habitual action (imperfective: pisah, "I was writing / I used to write"). The contrast is exactly the French passé simple versus imparfait, or the way English "I read all evening" (durative) differs from "I read it in one sitting" (bounded). Croatian once made this distinction with verb endings; today it makes it almost entirely with aspect inside the perfekt instead.

Sjedjah uz prozor i gledah kako pada snijeg.

I was sitting by the window and watching the snow fall. (literary; modern: Sjedio sam uz prozor i gledao...)

Svako jutro iđaše istim putem do crkve.

Every morning he/she would walk the same way to church. (literary, habitual past)

How it is formed

The imperfect is built on the present/infinitive stem plus a set of endings whose stem vowel is always a long a (the variants are -ah-, -jah-, or -ijah-). Because you are only recognising it, treat the table below as a key for decoding, not a paradigm to memorise. The diagnostic signature is the string -jah / -jaše / -jasmo / -jaste / -jahu (or the bare -ah- variant) sitting where you would expect a verb.

Person	raditi (work)	gledati (watch)	nositi (carry)
ja	rađah	gledah	nošah
ti	rađaše	gledaše	nošaše
on/ona/ono	rađaše	gledaše	nošaše
mi	rađasmo	gledasmo	nošasmo
vi	rađaste	gledaste	nošaste
oni/one/ona	rađahu	gledahu	nošahu

Notice three things that make the imperfect look strange to a learner who knows only the present. First, the 1sg and 3sg are distinct (rađah vs rađaše) — unlike the perfekt, where the participle is identical. Second, stems often jotate: raditi → rađah (d + j → đ), nositi → nošah (s + j → š), so the consonant before the ending may not match the infinitive. Third, the only persons you are at all likely to meet are the 3sg (-aše/-jaše) and 3pl (-ahu/-jahu), because old narrative is mostly third-person.

Vjetar fijukaše kroz pukotine starih zidina.

The wind whistled/was whistling through the cracks in the old walls. (3sg, literary description)

Ljudi se okupljahu na trgu i čekahu vijesti.

People were gathering in the square and waiting for news. (3pl, narrative background)

The imperfect of biti

The one imperfect form you will genuinely meet again and again is from biti ("to be"), because old prose narrates states and settings constantly. It comes from an old yat stem, surfacing in the ijekavian standard as the bje-/bija- shapes below, and you should simply learn to read these as "was / were."

Person	Form	Reads as
ja	bijah / bjeh	I was
ti	bijaše / bješe	you were
on/ona/ono	bijaše / bješe	he/she/it was
mi	bijasmo / bjesmo	we were
vi	bijaste / bjeste	you were
oni/one/ona	bijahu / bjehu	they were

Bijaše to davno, u nekom drugom stoljeću.

That was long ago, in some other century. (literary; the most idiomatic surviving imperfekt)

U početku bijaše Riječ.

In the beginning was the Word. (biblical register — John 1:1; the form many learners first meet)

💡

If you only ever recognise two imperfect forms, make them bijaše ("was") and bijahu ("were"). They anchor the opening of countless folk tales, hymns, and translations of scripture, and once you spot them the rest of the archaic sentence usually falls into place.

How it differs from English — and from the aorist

English has no synthetic past that maps onto the imperfect; the closest equivalents are the periphrastic "was -ing" (progressive) and "used to / would" (habitual). So when you decode gledaše, render it as "was watching" or "would watch," not as a bare "watched." The crucial Croatian distinction is the one English does not grammaticalise at all: imperfect = imperfective aspect = unbounded past; aorist = perfective aspect = bounded past. Where English needs adverbs ("all night" vs "in a flash"), old Croatian let the verb ending alone carry it.

And the practical asymmetry to internalise: the aorist is alive (you will hear rekoh, dođoh, bi), while the imperfect is archaic. Two tenses, same antiquity on paper, very different status in the living language. Do not lump them together. For the stylistic interplay of the two in literature, see the aorist–imperfect stylistics page.

Dok on spavaše, oni dođoše i odoše.

While he slept (imperfect, background), they came and left (aorist, events). (literary contrast of the two old pasts)

What modern Croatian uses instead

Everything the imperfect once did is now carried by the perfekt of an imperfective verb, with adverbs supplying the "ongoing" or "habitual" flavour. This is what you should both say and write.

Cijelu večer sam čitao i nisam ni primijetio koliko je sati.

I was reading all evening and didn't even notice how late it was. (modern equivalent of an imperfect)

Kao dijete sam ljeti svako jutro plivao u moru.

As a child I used to swim in the sea every morning in summer. (habitual past — modern, no imperfect needed)

Common Mistakes

❌ Jučer ja gledah utakmicu s prijateljima.

Wrong register — the imperfekt in casual conversation sounds absurdly archaic, like saying 'whilst I beheld' in English.

✅ Jučer sam gledao utakmicu s prijateljima.

Yesterday I watched the match with friends. (the only natural modern form)

❌ napisah / dođoh = imperfect

Wrong analysis — those are AORIST (perfective); the imperfect is built only on imperfective verbs (pisah, dolažah).

✅ pisah / dolažah = imperfect; napisah / dođoh = aorist

Correct — match the tense to the aspect of the base verb.

❌ bijaše = 'they were'

Wrong number — bijaše is singular ('was'); 'they were' is bijahu.

✅ bijaše = 'was' (sg); bijahu = 'were' (3pl)

Correct — the -aše/-ahu ending distinguishes singular from third-person plural.

❌ Reading gledaše as a simple 'watched'.

Under-translated — the imperfect is durative/habitual: 'was watching' or 'used to watch', not a one-off 'watched'.

✅ gledaše → 'was watching / would watch'

Correct — preserve the ongoing/repeated sense in English.

Key Takeaways

The imperfekt is the synthetic past of imperfective verbs (ongoing/habitual past) and is archaic in modern Croatian — a recognition-only form.
Decode it by the signature endings -ah/-aše/-asmo/-aste/-ahu (often jotated, e.g. rađah, nošah); the persons you will actually meet are mostly 3sg -aše and 3pl -ahu.
The single most useful forms to recognise are bijaše ("was") and bijahu ("were"), common in folk tales and scripture.
Do not confuse it with the aorist, which is perfective and still alive; the imperfect is genuinely obsolete.
Modern Croatian replaces it entirely with the perfekt of an imperfective verb plus adverbs: radio sam, čitao sam cijelu večer.

Now practice Croatian

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Croatian→