An infinitive that hides its stem
You have been using jesti (to eat) since the very first lessons: Jedem juhu svaki dan. Its present tense looks nothing like the infinitive, and that is the rule of a whole small family: verbs ending in -sti replace the -sti with a consonant before the present endings.
jesti → jed-
| jednina | množina | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | jedem | jedemo |
| 2. | jedeš | jedete |
| 3. | jede | jedu |
pojesti (to eat up) conjugates the same way: pojedem, pojedeš... Pojedem cijeli ručak prije podneva.
sjesti → sjedn-
A second group inserts -n-: sjesti → sjednem (and, later at B1, pasti → padnem). Sjednem na stolicu i čitam.
The past is soft
In the perfekt these verbs drop the -s- of the stem before the l-participle: jesti → jeo, jela; sjesti → sjeo, sjela; pasti → pao, pala. You have met these forms many times: Jeo sam sendvič u vlaku. Ona je sjela na stolicu. The masculine drops -l entirely (jeo, not *jel), exactly like the -ao verbs you know (radio, gledao).
