Breakdown of Gledam, ali ne vidim tvoju kuću.
kuća
house
ne
no, not
ali
but (strong contrast)
tvoj
your (informal)
gledati
to watch
vidjeti
to see
Questions & Answers about Gledam, ali ne vidim tvoju kuću.
What is the difference between gledam and vidim in this sentence?
Gledati (to look) is an imperfective verb focusing on the ongoing action or effort. Vidjeti (to see) focuses on the result of that action. This sentence perfectly shows the difference: you are putting in the effort to look (gledam), but you aren't getting the result of actually seeing the house (ne vidim).
The lesson mentions "suppletive pairs". Is that what is happening with gledati and vidjeti?
Yes! Usually, perfective and imperfective verb pairs share the same root word (like pisati and napisati). A suppletive pair uses two completely different words to show the process versus the result. Gledati (the process of looking) and vidjeti (the result of seeing) act as a pair here, just like govoriti (to speak) and reći (to say).
Why is it tvoju kuću instead of tvoja kuća?
The phrase tvoja kuća (your house) is the direct object of the verb vidjeti (to see), so it must be in the accusative case. For feminine nouns ending in -a, the ending changes to -u in the accusative, so both the pronoun and the noun change to tvoju kuću.
Why is the negative word ne written separately from vidim?
In Croatian, the negative word ne is almost always written as a separate word before verbs, so we write ne vidim (I do not see) and ne gledam (I do not look). There are only a few exceptions you learned earlier where they combine into a single word, such as nemam (I do not have) and neću (I will not).
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