A lot of those who learn the Serbian language as a foreigner make mistakes in their speech when it comes to verbs. That's why I decided to try to explain the difference between perfect and imperfect verbs in the easiest way.

The very words 'perfect' and 'imperfect' verbs associate us with the duration of the action. To make it clearer, we will use both options in the sentence:

The child is jumping on the grass.

The child jumped on the grass.

In the first sentence we have the verb 'jumps', and in the second sentence the verb 'jumped'. To make it easier for us to determine whether a verb is perfect or imperfect, we can insert a time adverb along with it and make it easier for ourselves.

For example: A child jumps on the grass (ten minutes). Makes sense, right? It is possible to jump on the grass for ten minutes.

Now let's take the second sentence as an example: The child jumped on the grass. And here we see that the action that happened was instantaneous, it took place only at that given moment and ended. Which means that in the first example it is an IMPERFECT VERB, and in the second example it is a PERFECT VERB.