Serbo-Croatian

the present tense in croatian is very irregular.

Is Croatian Imperfect an archaic tense like French subjunctive imperfect? This tense was used in literature but it's no longer used, even in essays, novels or papers.

The aorist and imperfect tenses are used in literature, news papers and in SMS and e-mails because it's shorter than the perfect tense.
You can hear it in a regular speech, but only in the 1st and 3rd persons. Of course, the perfect tense is way more used.

Extremely rarely do I hear imperfect in everyday speech. The fact is that more than 90% of people cannot conjugate verbs in imperfect (for example, if you ask someone to conjugate the verbs želeti, voleti, graditi, he would say želeh/želesmo, voleh/volesmo, gradih/gradismo instead of željah/željasmo, voljah/voljasmo, gradjah/gradjasmo). How many people could conjugate the verb moći (moćijah, moćijaše, moćijaše…)? I guess less than 0.5%. I know perfectly well the difference between aorist and imperfect and I never confuse them, but I (almost) never hear imperfect in everyday speech. Aorist is frequently used (my grandmother uses it more frequently than simple perfect). Maybe you know some region where imperfect is still used at some degree? For example, if I said to someone: "Hotijahu se odmoriti zato što se ne osećahu dobro.", or "Posekoh se dok secijah hleb" he would look at me as if I were crazy.

Sorbian is the most complex and archaic Slavonic languages: it retains the dual form (for nouns, adjectives and verbs), Aorist and imperfect tenses and 7 cases like most Slavic languages, except Bulgarian, Macedonian. Russian and Slovak retain 6 cases

nadine, croatian and serbian aorist and imperfect conjugations are different. lots of verbs are conjugated differently and of course, as we use 3 jat reflexes ije/je/e, and you guys only -e-, it's not the same thing. u agree with you, aorist is so much more used than the imperfect tense.

rty, both croatian and serbian retain the dual form for nouns and pronouns and the 8th case, but some linguists still don't want to include it in standard grammars. it's called "malina"

I'm from Zagreb, and we don't use neither imperfect or aorist, maybe do to kaikavian ifluence (kaj si rekel [kajkavian] ~ kaj/sta si rek(a)o [Zg vernacular)...The same is true of Rijeka and Pula.
Imperfect and aorist are used in poor regions of east (Slavonia) and south (Lika and Dalmatia).
I've never heard impefect or aorist used in contemporary Croatian telenovela or sitcom, but they are used in Bosnian language.

In literary language, aorist/imperfect are used for things far in the past , so it's an error to day:

Ja sada Odoh or Bas Rekoh.


Bas sam rekao sada. (perfect).
Rekoh prije dvadeset godina (aorist).

Cvale su ruze u zadnje vrijeme. (perfect).
Cvatijahu ruze za razdoblja Napoleona. (imperfect)

it's odd but the action in ''cvale su ruze'' is imperfect (continuous),
and not perfect.

As far as I know, Serbian is much more conservative than its sister language Croatian. Croatian has been undergoing a process of rapid simplification! Pitch accent is going to desappear, Aorist is no longer used in Speech. The conditional mood is composed of bi plus past participle, the Aorist of the verb to be is no longer conjugated. How on earth are there all these differences? Of course all these trends are present in Serbian as well but to a minor extent

As far as I know, Serbian is much more conservative than its sister language Croatian. Croatian has been undergoing a process of rapid simplification! Pitch accent is going to desappear, Aorist is no longer used in Speech. The conditional mood is composed of bi plus past participle, the Aorist of the verb to be is no longer conjugated. How on earth are there all these differences? Of course all these trends are present in Serbian as well but to a minor extent

Woow Is it true?

hahahahahaha what a stupid comment. serbian, from Belgrade, is just like Croatian from Zagreb, that is, they are both getting simplified. the accent is different and that's all folks!