Word
Nisam mogao paziti na lonac, pa sam se opekao.
Meaning
I could not watch the pot, so I burned myself.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Nisam mogao paziti na lonac, pa sam se opekao.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
nisam
am not (nisi, nije, nismo, niste, nisu)
na
on, at / to, onto (with motion) / about (thinking about)
moći
can
Questions & Answers about Nisam mogao paziti na lonac, pa sam se opekao.
How is mogao formed?
Mogao is the masculine singular past tense (l-participle) of moći (can / to be able to). Verbs ending in -ći have irregular past tense forms. You cannot just drop the ending like regular verbs; instead, the stem changes. For a male speaker, it becomes mogao, and for a female speaker, mogla.
Is opekao also an irregular verb from this lesson?
Yes! The infinitive is opeći se (to burn oneself). Just like moći, it ends in -ći, making its past tense irregular. The masculine form is opekao (as seen here), and the feminine form would be opekla (opekla sam se).
Why do we say paziti na lonac instead of just paziti lonac?
To say "to keep an eye on" or "to watch", the verb paziti requires the preposition na followed by the accusative case. Because lonac (pot) is a non-living masculine noun, its accusative form looks exactly the same as its dictionary form.
Why are the words sam se placed immediately after pa?