Verb htjeti (to want) in Croatian

Croatian ⋙ Croatian A1

Welcome to our Croatian course for beginners! Today we're going to talk about the verb "htjeti."

"Htjeti" means "to want" or "to wish" in English. It's used to express desires or intentions.
On the one hand, it's an essential verb for expressing our desires and intentions in various contexts, from ordering food at a restaurant to making plans with friends.
Also, "htjeti" is an irregular verb, which means it doesn't follow the typical conjugation patterns of regular verbs in Croatian.
And the most important thing is that 'htjeti' is the auxiliary verb for forming the future tense (Futur prvi).
So you definitely need to know this verb if you want to speak Croatian.

Conjugation

First, let's see how this verb is conjugated in the present tense. Here is the affirmative form (full / short):
As you can see, this verb can't be attributed to any of the types discussed in the lesson about present-tense verbs.

The negative form in the present tense is formed like other verbs by adding "ne" in front of the short form:

Using

When using these verb forms in the present tense, full forms are usually employed in interrogative sentences and in affirmative ones when you want to emphatically confirm an answer or provide a brief response. For example:


And that's all for now. Don't forget that learning the verb 'htjeti' is a crucial step in mastering the Croatian language. And be prepared for the fact that in the next lessons, we will explain how the future tense is formed in Croatian. Good luck!