Traps with имати
Four slips that turn a correct sentence with имати into a wrong one: leaving the thing you have in its dictionary form, leaving the missing thing after impersonal нема in its plain form instead of shifting it into the genitive, 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
Remove -ти and add the regular -ам endings. Ask a yes/no question with ли after the verb: Имаш ли…?
Age and the impersonal нема
Give your age with имати: Ја имам двадесет година means ‘I am twenty years old.’
Impersonal нема means ‘there is/are no…’: Нема проблема. The noun is genitive; learn this common pattern as a whole for now.
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | imam | imamo |
| 2. | imaš | imate |
| 3. | ima | imaju |