Pogledaju

Pogledaju is a verb form used in several South Slavic languages to express a completed action of looking at something. It represents the third-person plural present tense of the verb pogledati, a perfective counterpart to gledati, which means to look at or to take a brief glance at. The prefix po- in pogledati signals a sense of completion or emphasis, and the stem pogled- reflects the root related to looking.

In usage, pogledaju indicates that the subject(s) perform a single, bounded act of looking at an object or situation. This form is typically used with a direct object or with a clause specifying what is being looked at. It is commonly found in narrative, descriptive, and reported-speech contexts, where the speaker wants to highlight the moment of inspecting or examining something.

Orthography and varieties: in standard Latin-script varieties of Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian, the form is written as pogledaju. In Cyrillic script it appears as погледају. Dialectal and regional differences may produce slight orthographic variants, but the core meaning and aspect remain the same.

Relation to other forms: pogledaju contrasts with imperfective look-forms such as gledaju, which express ongoing or repeated looking rather than a momentary, completed act. The distinction reflects the broader South Slavic aspect system, where prefixes and verb families encode nuance of action timing.

See also: gledati, pogled, pogledati, South Slavic languages, verb conjugation, perfective aspect.