Building the past tense in Croatian

Being English natives, we like to distinguish two different types of tenses when talking about the past: the imperfect (e.g. I was ) and the present perfect (e.g. I have been).
For Croatian natives (and soon: us!) this difference is not relevant.
Because Croatian has the aspect to express these differences.
So, there is only one past tense, we have to get acquainted with.

If you would like to revise the irregular present tense of 'biti', please follow the link.
As you remember, when we talked about the past participle we had to distinguish six forms – for all three gender and singular/plural.
This means, the past participle adopts to the subject of a sentence in gender and in number.
So, let's take a closer look at some examples.

💡 For example:
Our Croatian friend Marco would say:
👨 “ja sam išao” (m) – I have gone
But his wife Kristina would put it like this:
👩 “ja sam išla” (f) – I have gone
 
If Marco hasn't gone to the market to buy fresh groceries, he would use the phrase:
👨 “ja nisam išao” (m) – I haven't gone
And Kristina would negate her sentence with:
👩 “ja nisam išla” (f) – I haven't gone