~6 min · 11 exercises

Part of the unit “Health: describing symptoms and visiting the doctor”

Перфекат

past-tense-perfekat

Overview

Serbian has only one true past tense in everyday use - perfekat - covering what English splits between the simple past (I read) and the present perfect (I have read). It is a compound tense: the present tense of бити (see verb-biti-present-a1) in its short form, plus a participle of the main verb that agrees with the subject's gender and number.

Building the participle (радни глаголски придев)

Drop the infinitive ending -ти and add a participle ending that agrees with the subject: -о for a masculine singular subject, -ла feminine singular, -ло neuter singular, -ли masculine plural, -ле feminine plural, -ла neuter plural.

This applies uniformly across the three present-tense groups from present-tense-regular-verbs-a1 - see the table below.

Combining participle and auxiliary

The auxiliary is the same short (enclitic) бити you already know from verb-biti-present-a1 - сам, си, је, смо, сте, су - and it follows the identical second-position rule: it leans on the first stressed word of the clause. Both „Ја сам читао.“ and „Читао сам.“ are correct; the enclitic сам simply cannot be the first word.

Negation fuses the same way as with бити alone: нисам, ниси, није, нисмо, нисте, нису + participle - never не сам.

Tables

Forming the participle by group
Infinitive	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
читати (-ам)	читао	читала	читало
видети (-ети/-им)	видео	видела	видело
радити (-им)	радио	радила	радило

Examples

Јуче сам читао књигу.

Yesterday I read a book.

Masculine participle читао agrees with a male speaker.

Она је читала цео дан.

She read / has been reading all day.

Feminine participle читала.

Марко је радио у Београду годину дана.

Marko worked / has worked in Belgrade for a year.

Ми смо гледали филм синоћ.

We watched a film last night.

Plural participle гледали for ми.

Ви сте путовали много прошле године.

You (pl.) traveled a lot last year.

Нисам видео тај филм.

I haven't seen that film.

Negative auxiliary нисам + masculine participle.

Она није видела поруку.

She hasn't seen the message.

Negative auxiliary + feminine participle.

Био сам у Србији два пута.

I have been to Serbia twice.

бити's own perfekat - regular formation: био/била/било.

Јуче ме је болела глава.

Yesterday my head hurt.

Перфекат applied to a2-health-body's own Боли ме глава: the feminine participle болела agrees with глава, and the clitics ме је still lean on the first stressed word - here the adverb Јуче, not the subject.

Compared with…

English keeps the simple past (I read) and the present perfect (I have read) as two distinct constructions with different meanings; Serbian's perfekat covers both with one form, so context alone decides the English translation. English past-tense verbs also carry no gender agreement whatsoever, so a participle changing shape for a masculine vs. a feminine subject is genuinely new.

Serbian

Читала сам ту књигу.

One Serbian sentence, two possible English tenses depending on context.

English

I read that book. / I have read that book.

Common mistakes

Wrong

Он читао књигу.

Right

Он је читао књигу.

For a non-reflexive verb, the auxiliary је cannot be dropped just because the participle already shows gender - the auxiliary and the participle each carry their own piece of agreement, person and gender respectively, and both pieces are required. (The one exception is a reflexive verb's 3rd-person је, obligatorily omitted next to се.)

Wrong

Сам читао књигу.

Right

Читао сам књигу.

The enclitic auxiliary сам cannot start a clause - put the participle (or another stressed word) first, same rule as бити's short forms.

Wrong

Она је читао књигу.

Right

Она је читала књигу.

The participle must agree with the subject's gender: a feminine subject needs читала, not the masculine читао.

Wrong

Ја сам не читао.

Right

Нисам читао.

Negation fuses onto the auxiliary as one word - нисам - never не сам.

Tips & exceptions

Tips

Learn participle formation together with the present-tense group: drop -ти, add -о/-ла/-ло/-ли/-ле/-ла for masculine/feminine/neuter singular and masculine/feminine/neuter plural.
Track the auxiliary and the participle separately: the auxiliary marks person (matches the subject pronoun), the participle marks gender and number (matches the subject's grammatical gender).
The feminine-singular and neuter-plural participles are spelled identically (e.g. радила) - only the subject tells them apart.

Exceptions

ићи (to go) has an irregular participle: ишао/ишла/ишло/ишли/ишле/ишла - not the regular -о pattern.
моћи (can/to be able) also has an irregular participle stem: могао/могла/могло/могли/могле/могла.
Verb stems ending in -сти often keep an extra consonant only in the masculine-singular participle (e.g. расти → растао, but расла, расло, расли stay without it) - worth learning verb-by-verb.

Summary

Perfekat combines the short present of бити (сам, си, је, смо, сте, су) with a participle that agrees with the subject's gender and number (drop infinitive -ти, add -о/-ла/-ло/-ли/-ле/-ла). It covers both English's simple past and present perfect in one form. The auxiliary follows the same second-position rule as бити alone and fuses with negation (нисам, ниси, није…) - for a non-reflexive verb it marks the person and can never be dropped, even though the participle alone already shows gender and number; the one exception is a reflexive verb's 3rd-person је, obligatorily omitted next to се.