If you’ve taken classes with me, or are planning to, your English is truly good. So first things first, think about that for a minute. You’ve achieved a lot. Let yourself feel all the good feels!

Good as you may be, there’s a pretty big chance you make lots of the same mistakes other Croatian learners of English make. Even the most advanced speakers make them. Which is why I wrote my book, Common Mistakes Croats Make in English (finally, finally, finally coming out soon!!!).

One mistake I hear often is the use of the wrong tense after the reporting verbs say, know, and think. (And yes—know and think are reporting verbs. We can report on what someone knew or thought, no? Including what we knew or thought!)

What mistake do Croats make with reporting verbs?

Generally speaking Croats are quite good at reported speech and backshifting.

(Need a refresher in backshifting? Voila.)

There is, however, one tricky situation that leads to some awkward sentences.

Let’s see if you make the mistake.

Take a second to translate these three sentences:

Ivan je rekao da je profesionalni žongler.
Maja je mislila da je to divno.
Znala je da je teško slijediti svoje snove.

What tense did you put the reporting verb (“rekao je”/”mislila je”/”znala je”) in in English? Simple past, right? That’s correct.

But how about the verbs in the reported speech/thoughts (“da je…”)?

Did you put them in the present simple?

If so, it’s a good thing you opened this email. Because that’s a literal translation from Croatian, an automatic mistake that’s super common. Don’t feel bad if you made it.

The correct translations are:

Ivan je rekao / da je profesionalni žongler.

Ivan said / he *was* a professional juggler.

Maja je mislila / da je to divno.

Maja thought / that *was* wonderful.

Znala je / da je teško slijediti svoje snove.

She knew / that it *was* hard to follow your dreams.

To English sentences such as these, students often protest:

“But he probably still IS a professional juggler!”

“What if she STILL thinks that’s wonderful?!”

“It’s TRUE that it’s hard to follow your dreams! She still thinks that too at the time of reporting!”

To which I say:

Look, honey, I didn’t make up the rules.

Just kidding. I say:

You’re right! The thing is, though, that in English, we prioritize grammatical consistency when reporting speech or thoughts. This means that if the reporting verb (e.g., said, thought, knew) is in the past tense, the verbs in the reported speech are typically shifted to the past as well, regardless of whether or not the situation or belief is still true at the time of reporting. This helps maintain a consistent time frame and grammatical structure.

But there are exceptions.

The first exception is when it’s a sytlistic choice.

You can sometimes use either the simple past (to match the main verb, which is what you would usually do) or the simple present—you’d use the simple present to emphasize the present relevance or immediacy of what you’re reporting on.

Ex.:

SIMPLE PAST

(standard)

What do you mean you don’t want to eat?! You just told me you were hungry two seconds ago!

SIMPLE PRESENT

(acceptable for emphasis, but less conventional)

What do you mean you don’t want to eat?! You just told me you’re hungry two seconds ago!

The second exception is when we are reporting on general facts or ongoing truths.

Oh, wait, wait: that means one of our sentences above is an exception. Which one?

*

*

*

(Giving you time to check.)

*

*

*

The exception is the last one:

She knew / that it was hard to follow your dreams.

If we take it be a general truth that it is hard to follow your dreams, we could put the second part of this sentence in the present tense:

She knew / that it’s hard to follow your dreams.

However, it’s more common to put it in the past tense, because this isn’t really a fact, per se.

On the other hand, with straight-up proper facts (“the sky is blue”, “water boils at 100 degree celcius”, “politicians lie” :p), it’s actually more common to use the present tense in the reported speech.

Ex.: All the kids in the group knew that the earth is round, but still they drew it like it was flat.

But you could still say (though here it would be less common to do so):

All the kids in the group knew that the earth was round, but still they drew it like it was flat.

Questions? Comments? Get in touch!