Questions & Answers about Djeca čitaju priču naglas u učionici.
Why does the sentence use djeca čitaju and not djeca čita?
Djeca means children and is grammatically plural in Croatian, so the verb must also be plural: čitaju (3rd person plural).
- djeca – noun, plural, children
- čitaju – 3rd person plural of čitati (to read)
Using djeca čita would be ungrammatical in standard Croatian.
If you talk about one child, you change both the noun and the verb:
- Dijete čita priču naglas u učionici. – The child is reading a story aloud in the classroom.
Here dijete is singular, so you use čita (3rd person singular).
What tense and aspect is čitaju? Does it mean read or are reading?
Čitaju is the present tense of the imperfective verb čitati (to read). Croatian doesn’t have a separate continuous form like English (are reading), so the same present form can mean both:
- Djeca čitaju priču sada. – The children are reading a story now.
- Djeca često čitaju priče. – The children often read stories.
Aspect:
- čitati – imperfective (focus on the process, not completion)
- pročitati – perfective (to read something through, to finish reading)