Traps with имати
Four slips that turn a correct sentence with имати into a wrong one: reaching for бити to give your age, calquing a possessor construction word for word instead of a plain transitive sentence, and conjugating the verb off its wrong stem. Ten minutes of building the right version and picking it out from three wrong ones - the last of the unit's grammar lessons, right before the traveller who checks their bag for real.
The part of the grammar page this lesson drills — read it here, then use it.
Affirmative present
Drop -ти from имати and add the regular -ам-group endings (see the table below). Имаш ли…?, with the question particle ли right after the verb, is the natural way to ask a yes/no question.
Age and the impersonal нема
To give your age, Serbian uses имати, not бити: Ја имам двадесет година. (literally I have twenty years) means „I am twenty years old.“
Without any subject, 3rd-person-singular нема means there isn't/aren't: Нема проблема. (No problem.) The missing thing is expressed in a special case form, covered fully in a later lesson - for now, learn such phrases as fixed wholes.
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | imam | imamo |
| 2. | imaš | imate |
| 3. | ima | imaju |