Osnovali

Osnovali is a verb form in South Slavic languages such as Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin. It is the third-person masculine plural past tense form (aorist) of the perfective verb osnovati, meaning to found or establish. The form is used when the subject of the sentence is a group that founded something in the past.

The verb osnovati comes from the root osnov- meaning base or foundation, and combines with the infinitive suffix -ati to form a regular perfective verb. As a past-tense aorist form, osnovali denotes a completed, single act of founding by a plural subject. Other gender-number forms exist for different subjects: osnovao (masc singular), osnovala (fem singular or feminine subject), osnovalo (neut single), osnovali (masc plural), osnovale (fem plural). In standard usage, the past tense often appears with the auxiliary su in spoken language, as in osnovali su.

Usage notes: osnovali is typically used to describe the creation of institutions, organizations, companies, settlements, or other entities by a group. It has a definite, completed sense of establishment and is common in historical, journalistic, and formal writing.

Distinctions: the related imperfective verb osnivati contrasts with osnovati. Osnivati describes recurring or ongoing establishment activities (imperfective), while osnovati emphasizes a single, completed founding event (perfective). For example, one might say they founded a school (osnovali školu) as a completed act, whereas osnivavati would be used to describe the ongoing process of founding activities over time.

See also: osnovati, osnivati, Serbo-Croatian grammar, aorist.