hteti & moći
Lesson opening
This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
hteti and moći: “want” and “can”
In the lesson “Present tense” you saw that the “I” form of almost every verb ends in -m, with just two exceptions: mogu and hoću. Here they are, two verbs no day goes by without: hteti “to want; to be going to” and moći “can, to be able to”. Both stand apart from the crowd. First, they are irregular: you cannot predict their present from the infinitive (hteti gives hoć-, moći gives mog- and mož-), so the forms have to be learnt by heart. Second, they are everywhere: “I want a coffee”, “can you help?”, “I can’t right now” is day-one speech.
English will not find this strange. Its own "want-and-can" verbs are odd too: we say "she can", never "she cans", and "I can help" with no "to". And hteti has a hidden second job that English knows very well. Just as biti has the short form sam, hteti has a short form ću, and out of it Serbian builds its future tense, much as English built its future out of will, a verb that once meant "want". So while learning "want", you are quietly laying the foundation of the future.
hteti: the full form, the clitic and the negative
This verb comes with three columns of forms, and you need all three. The full (stressed) hoću is the everyday "I want"; the short clitic ću is the building block of the future; the negative neću "I don't want" is written as one word.
A few surprises in the table. The “I” form ends in -u, not the -m of every regular verb: hoću is one of the two verbs that kept this older ending (the other is mogu). “He wants” and “they want” are the same word, hoće. And the letter ć is the soft “ch”, softer than the ch of church, close to the t of British tune: hoću sounds roughly like “HO-choo”. The full form hoću is the ordinary “I want”, and it is also the short answer: Hoćeš li kafu? Hoću. “Do you want a coffee?” “I do.” The clitic ću can never stand alone like that.
The negative neću is written as one word, like nisam "I am not": the Serbian "I don't want" is a single word, never "ne hoću". It is stressed, so it can happily open a sentence: Neću ništa. "I don't want anything." (Notice the double negative, neću ništa, literally "I don't want nothing": in Serbian that is correct, not sloppy.)
After hoću you name either the thing you want, a noun in the accusative (the object case), or the action you want to do, with da + a verb. Compare the two paths:
Both patterns are everyday Serbian. The left one is “want + thing”, just as in English; the right one is “want + action”, and here English “to sleep”, “to order” corresponds to Serbian da + a fully conjugated verb: da pijem is literally “that I drink”. You met this pattern in the lesson “Infinitive & stems”.
Cheat sheet
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hteti and moći: “want” and “can”
Two irregular, indispensable verbs: hteti "to want; to be going to" and moći "can, to be able to, may". Learn the forms by heart. Their "I" forms end in -u, not -m. hteti has a short clitic ću (unstressed, like sam): the future is built from it, as English built its future from will, once "want".
hteti: full form · clitic · negative
- “He wants” and “they want” are both hoće. The short answer is the full form: Hoćeš li kafu? Hoću. “Do you want a coffee?” “I do.”
- The negative neću is one word (like nisam); it is stressed and can open a sentence: Neću ništa. "I don't want anything."
- Want a thing: accusative. Hoću kafu. "I want a coffee", Hoću vodu. "I want some water", Hoćeš li sok? "Would you like juice?", On neće ništa. "He doesn't want anything", Neće kafu. "She doesn't want coffee."
- Want to do something: da + present, the second verb conjugated. Hoću da pijem vodu. “I want to drink some water”, Hoćeš li da naručiš? “Do you want to order?”, Neće da priča. “He won’t talk”, Hoćemo da idemo kući. “We want to go home.”
moći: g before u, ž before e
- “I” and “they” are the same form: mogu.
- Like English can, it covers ability (Mogu da trčim deset kilometara. “I can run ten kilometres”) and permission: Mogu li da uđem? “May I come in?”, Možemo li da sednemo ovde? “Can we sit here?”, Ovde ne možete da pušite. “You can’t smoke here.” Requests: Možeš li…? (friend), Možete li…? (stranger).
- Everyday lines: Može! “OK, deal!”, Može li? “Is that OK?”, Tako ne može. “That won’t do”, Ne mogu sada, izvini. “I can’t right now, sorry”, Možeš li da dođeš sutra? “Can you come tomorrow?” “Maybe” is možda: Možda sutra.