Words for colors are adjectives as well. The main color adjectives in Croatian are:
b |
plavi
▶
blue |
For example:
Jabuka je crvena. ▶ The apple is red.
List je zelen. The leaf is green.
The adjective smeđ is one of adjectives that get an -e in neuter instead of the usual -o:
Oko je smeđe. The eye is brown.
There’s a simple but effective rule to determine which adjectives get an -e: ones that end in a Croatian-specific letter, that is, a letter that’s not pronounced like in English or even does not exist in English.
Beside smeđ, often used adjectives that get an -e are:
loš ▶ bad | vruć ▶ hot |
(You’ll encounter more such adjectives as you go.)
If you want to say that something is e.g. dark green, put tamno- to the front of the color adjective – the result is one, long word. Likewise, light + color is expressed with svjetlo-:
Majica je tamnocrvena. The T-shirt is dark red.
Auto je svjetlozelen. The car is light green.
Two color adjectives have a specific meaning with some nouns, quite different from usage in English:
plava kosa
blond hair
crno vino
red wine
Literally, in Croatian, wines can be ‘black’, and blond-haired people have ‘blue’ hair. (If you want to know why, the adjective plavi meant pale thousand years ago.)
There’s another adjective for ‘color’ frequently used in Croatian:
šaren multicolored, motley
It doesn’t really translate into English: it’s used when in English you would describe something having colored stripes or many colors, especially bright, live colors:
Majica je šarena. The T-shirt is multicolored. (has bright colors)
There are two adjectives for colors that are used colloquially. Both have a special behavior – they don’t change their form at all, neither in plural, nor in gender, nor in cases. They have only one form. Such words are called indeclinable (indecl. for short). They are:
lila pale violet roza pink ® | colloquial & indeclinable |
(The colloqual adjective for pink exists also as a normal adjective rozi.)
With colors and some similar adjectives, you can use the following adverbs that stress completeness:
potpuno | completely, fully |
The adverb potpuno is much more common in speech. For example:
Soba je potpuno bijela. The room is completely white.
You can also combine colors: the first one is always in neuter N, and the second one changes; they are usually spelled with a hyphen between:
crno-bijeli televizor black-and-white TV set
crno-bijela košulja black-and-white shirt
crveno-plava zastava red-and-blue flag
Some adjectives have a slightly different form in the masculine nominative (which is the dictionary form) and whenever anything is attached to them (e.g. when they get an -a for the feminine gender).
For instance, the adjective dobar good has the feminine form dobra, that is dobr + a. Other forms that have any ending are also formed as dobr + ending.
In the same way as for some nouns, can say that dobr- is the case-base of the adjective dobar and list it together with the dictionary form. For most adjectives their case-base is the same as their masculine form, so we list it only when it’s needed. A good Croatian dictionary should list it too (or something equivalent to it, e.g. the feminine form).
Often used adjectives that have a specific case-base are:
dobar (dobr-) good gladan (gladn-) hungry hladan (hladn-) cold mokar (mokr-) wet mračan (mračn-) dark opasan (opasn-) dangerous prazan (prazn-) empty ružan (ružn-) ugly |
sladak (slatk-) sweet sretan (sretn-) happy ® strašan (strašn-) terrible taman (tamn-) dark tužan (tužn-) sad umoran (umorn-) tired važan (važn-) important žedan (žedn-) thirsty |
You see that two adjectives have meaning dark. The adjective mračan (mračn-) means not well-lit, or gloomy (e.g. movie), while taman (tamn-) means something painted in a dark paint, or having a dark color (e.g. hair).
The ‘case-base’ usually looks like nominative masculine form without the last a, but sometimes there are other kinds of alternations:
bolestan (bolesn-) sick | topao (topl-) warm |
Warning. Some books give a rough rule that -a- is always lost, whenever anything is added. This is true for most adjectives with more than one syllable – but not for all. Also, it’s not the complete rule, as you can see from additional consonant changes that sometimes apply.
Let’s put the adjectives above to use:
Ivana je žedna. Ivana is thirsty.
Ivan je žedan. Ivan is thirsty.
As I have already explained, adjectives usually get an -i before masculine nouns, especially colloquially; but it doesn’t happen with all adjectives, e.g. dobar (dobr-) good is almost always used without -i:
On je dobar prijatelj. He’s a good friend.
Compare this with:
On je stari prijatelj. He’s an old friend.
Other adjectives with a specific case-base are often used without -i before masculine nouns as well.
The following adjectives are used a bit differently than in English:
debeo (debel-) thick lagan light(weight), ‘easy’ kratak (kratk-) short |
mastan (masn-) fat nizak (nisk-) low težak (tešk-) heavy, ‘hard’ |
Croatian uses težak heavy and lagan light in the literal sense:
Kamen je težak. ▶ The stone is heavy.
Kutija je lagana. The box is light.
Croatian also uses these two adverbs to indicate difficulty, in a quite different fashion than in English (the word dosta is here just to practice adverbs a bit):
Knjiga je dosta teška. The book is quite ‘heavy’. (= hard)
Problem je lagan. The problem is ‘light’. (= easy)
(If you know some German, you will recall the adjective schwer, with exactly these two meanings.)
Next, the adjective nizak (nisk-) low is used to specify low height of things in Croatian:
Polica je niska. The shelf is low.
Unlike English, it’s also used for short people (who are ‘low’ in Croatian):
Ana je niska. Ana is ‘low’. (= short)
The adjective kratak (kratk-) short is used in Croatian only to describe movies, bridges, roads, pieces of wood, etc.
In a similar fashion, books and people can be debeo (debel-) thick:
Knjiga je debela. The book is thick.
Ivana je debela. Ivana is ‘thick’. (= fat, plump)
Furthermore, Croatian has two adjectives corresponding to English free:
besplatan (besplatn-) free (of charge)
slobodan (slobodn-) free (of restrictions), unoccupied
You would use the first adjective only when something is offered without payment, e.g. a free sample, free show etc., and the other adjective in all other circumstances. This is basically the same difference as German kostenlos vs. frei, or Spanish gratuito vs. libre.
You will notice that neuter forms of adjectives are often used as adverbs, i.e. words that modify verbs and other adjectives. For example, the adjective spor slow in the neuter form sporo means slow (before a neuter noun, or when describing it) or slowly when used without a noun:
Ana vozi sporo. ▶ Ana drives slowly.
Many adjectives are used like that, and it usually corresponds to English -ly, e.g. užasno is the neuter form of užasan (užasn-) terrible, but also stands for English terribly.
However, some adjectives when used as adverbs change meaning. They are best remembered as separate words. The most often used ones are:
adjective | adverb |
---|---|
jak strong | jako very / very much |
mali small, tiny | malo a bit, a little |
pun full | puno a lot ® |
For instance, the first sentence contains an adjective, but the others contain adverbs of intensity:
Vino je jako. ▶ The wine is strong. (about vino wine = a noun)
Jako je vruće. ▶ It’s very hot. (about vruće hot)
Auto je jako brz. The car is very fast. (about brz fast)
Goran jako voli čokoladu. Goran likes chocolate very much. (about the verb)
When used with another adverb or adjective, jako corresponds to English very (e.g. very hot); with a verb, it corresponds to very much.
There’s one more useful, but very colloquial word, mostly used by younger people. It can be used as an adjective and as an adverb of intensity with another adjective or a verb. (Its use with verbs is very colloquial!) When used as an adjective, it’s indeclinable:
super (colloq.) |
adj. indecl. great, excellent, superb adv. super, very |
For instance, you’ll hear and sometimes read:
Imam super majicu. (colloq.) I have a great T-shirt.
Auto je super brz. (colloq.) The car is super fast.
Ana super pjeva. (colloq.!) Ana sings great.
Finally, there’s one very useful word used for comparisons:
kao like, as
While English has two words used to compare against something else, Croatian has one multipurpose word. It’s used like this:
More je hladno kao led. The sea is cold as ice.
The word kao doesn’t affect the case of the following word, and never changes case etc. In speech, it’s often shortened to ko, spelled also as k’o.
________
® In Serbia, where “Ekavian” forms dominate, the adjective white has the form beo (bel-).
Instead of narančast, a slightly different adjective is used in Serbia: narandžast. It’s also common in Bosnia. Besides smeđ, there’s another, but indeclinable adjective for brown, used in Bosnia and Serbia: braon. It completely prevails in Serbia, where smeđ is really only used to describe eyes, hair and color of pets.
Instead of roza, a slightly different word roze is common in Serbia and Bosnia. It’s very uncommon in the regularized form rozi there.
Instead of sretan (sretn-), a slightly different word srećan (srećn-) is used in Serbia and most of Bosnia.
Some style guides in Serbia discourage using puno as an adverb and advise mnogo is used instead.

What are the different usages of 'taman' and 'mračan'?
ReplyDeleteAnd what are some examples where 'sretan' would be used?
Thanks,
– Max
OK, this is a bit fine point. taman is used mostly to describe color, while mračan is used to describe light conditions, e.g. dark day, dark cellar, but also metaphorically. I will think about it a bit more, and clarify it in the blog.
DeleteSretan simply means happy, but also luck. You could say:
Danas sam sretan I'm happy today.
Thanks! br Daniel
Hey Daniel! Thanks so much for this blog. It's been extremely useful to me in learning Croatian. I've been using it daily, along with your Memrise course. I am confident I will become fluent in no time!
ReplyDeleteP.S. Just a small correction. We don't use the adjective "fat" for food. People and animals can be "fat" but food is only ever "fatty" unless you are talking about thick meat (eg. a fat steak).
Thanks for the correction! I completely removed the reference to "fat" :) lp
DeleteThe color names meaning differently is found in many languages. Japanese has "aoi", a word used for both blue and green. They have a newer "midori" for green but the green light is still "aoi shingo". Speaking of Japanese, short stature is also same as in Croatian. They say: "Se ga hikui" (the back(bone) is low), opposite being "se ga takai" (the back(bone) is high).
ReplyDeleteSome pronuniation files don't work on this page too.
Thanks! I will add this information above. About the file, I have to look into it, what problem there is. lp
DeleteShould the 'case-base' for blue be 'plav' instead of 'plavi'. It seems that most adjectives 'case-bases' end in a masculine consonant. Is it because it's not either ending in the feminine -a or neuter -o or -e?
ReplyDeleteOh, and it seems the Croatian pop-up keyboard is not working for this exercise. It allows me to click the box for using it, but it does not show up, when answering the exercises. And if I remember correctly, chapter 8 is missing the Croatian keyboard option in its exercise. (I just used copy and paste, and still worked though)
Although, it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm just trying to offer advice on possible problems. I find your blog to be extremely digestible for someone learning a new language, and has improved my grammar skills immensely already. I use another learning site for my vocabulary, but their way of teaching the finer points of grammar are very weak in providing detail into irregularities and perfecting it. I extremely appreciate what you are doing here.
You're right, all forms are derived from plav-, but it's expected for such adjectives (check mali small in the previous chapter) so there's no need to list it. If the masc. form of an adjective always has -i, you should remove it before adding any other ending.
DeleteThe HR keyboard was added recently, and it's possible it's not working properly in some chapters.
Feel free to ask/comment/etc. lp
I've fixed the pop-up keyboard for this chapter :) lp
DeleteI've added the pop-up keyboard to the chapter #8 lp
DeleteAh, that makes sense. Thank you for clarifying and for the keyboard fix. :)
DeleteHi Daniel..thanks for the wonderful course. One question...being a male I have a T-shirt and an "ordinary" button-up shirt. In this exercise you use the same word for both..(majica) In Croatian how would one distinguish one from the other ?
ReplyDeleteYou're right, I've fixed the examples. For us, majica is a thing we wear every day, i.e. a T-shirt. The word for a button-up shirt is košulja but people wear it less often here. For example, everybody in my office wears T-shirts all the time, except for one woman who dresses up sometimes.
Deletelp Daniel
it still needs correcting in the example at the end of the lesson..imam super majica...sorry to be a nit-picker
DeleteUh, thanks. No, you HAVE to be a nitpicker. BTW it's Imam super majicu, the object needs to be in accusative I've fixed it :) lp
DeleteI have the habit of trying to link the new word to the ones I already know. Trying to remember prilican, I tried to do that, but still could not have a logical connection to the meaning. So, please help me with the below:
ReplyDeletelice =face (=person), ličan =facial (=personal), priličan =? (considerable?, appropriate =fitting for a person/occasion?), prilčno =? (quite?, faily?, commonly?)
The first two are okay, but then it starts becoming confusing. Would it be possible to explain the meanings of priličan (adj) and prilično (adv), maybe with some short sample sentences? I appreciate your blog; it is easy to follow, and the explanations are clear. I congratulate you for your work and thank you for you efforts to teach the language.
unfortunately, that's not how the lamguage works :( Ličan is rare in Croatia, osoban "personal" is mostly used.
DeletePriličan "considerable" is not really common. Prilično "considerably, quite" is more common. Words shift meanings over centuries. Some were taken from similar languages (e.g. Czech or Russian) and look almost native, but they aren't.
For example dovoljan "enough" is clearly related to volja "will", but with priličan it's best to consider it a word on its own.
You'll see that words in Croatian have generally unpredictable meanings...
I have the habit of trying to link a new word to the ones which have the same morpheme that I already know. Trying to remember priličan, I tried to do so but still could not have a logical connection to the root meaning. So, please help me with the below:
ReplyDeletelice =face (=person), ličan =facial (=personal), priličan =? [considerable? (any link to likeness?), appropriate =Eng: fitting for a person?/occasion (what is the connection with 'considerable')], prilčno =? (quite?, fairly?, commonly? > what is the connection with the adjective? Does not make sense --unless it does not come from the same root with ličan, of ocurse). I even checked the prefix pri- (prie-) but could not fit the connection with the meaning.
Of the four words in question, the first two are okay, but then, it starts becoming confusing. Would it be possible to explain the meanings of priličan (adj) and prilično (adv), maybe with some sample sentences? That would be great.
I appreciate your blog; it is easy to follow, and the explanations are clear. I congratulate you for your work and thank you for your worthy efforts to teach the language.