Questions & Answers about Pregovaramo o plati i radnom vremenu.
What does pregovaramo tell me about the subject and tense?
Pregovaramo is the 1st person plural present form of pregovarati.
So it means we negotiate or we are negotiating.
A few useful points:
- the ending -amo shows the subject is we
- Serbian often leaves the subject pronoun out, because the verb ending already tells you who is doing the action
- the present tense in Serbian can cover both English simple present and present continuous, so context tells you whether it means a general action or something happening right now
Why is the preposition o used here?
With pregovarati, Serbian normally uses o + locative to mean to negotiate about / concerning something.
So:
- pregovarati o plati = negotiate about salary
- pregovarati o radnom vremenu = negotiate about working hours
Even if English may translate this naturally without about, Serbian still uses o in this structure.
Why is it plati and not plata?
Because o requires the locative case.
The basic form is:
- plata = salary
After o, it changes to locative singular:
- o plati = about the salary
So this is a case change, not a different word.