11 Colors and Other Adjectives

Words for colors are adjectives as well. The main color adjectives in Croatian are:

bijel white crn black crven red ljubičast violet narančast orange

plavi blue siv gray smeđ brown zelen green žut yellow

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 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" that’s 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 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 adj. indecl. pale violet

roza adj. indecl. pink ®

With colors and some similar adjectives, you can use the following adverbs that stress completeness:

potpuno   sasvim

completely, fully

The adverb potpuno is much more common in speech. For example:

Soba je potpuno bijela. The room is completely white.

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.

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)

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; large-size people are not mastan (masn-) fat; the latter adjective applies to food etc.:

Knjiga je debela. The book is thick.

Ivana je debela. Ivana is ‘thick’. (= fat)

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.

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 before another adjective. It’s indeclinable as well:

super adj. indecl. great, excellent, superb; adv. super, very (colloq.)

For instance, you’ll hear and sometimes read:

Imam super majicu. (colloq.) I have a great shirt.

Auto je super brz. (colloq.) The car is super fast.

________
® Instead of roza, a slightly different word roze is common in Serbia and Bosnia. Instead of sretan (sretn-), a slightly different word srećan (srećn-) is used in Serbia and most of Bosnia.

↓ Exercise (click to show)

Fill in the sentences below:

Riba . The fish is gray.
Knjiga je . The book is good.
Goran je . Goran is happy.
Ines . Ines is happy.
More je . The sea is cold.
Film je . The movie is quite short.
Kutija . The box is heavy.
Kava je . The coffee is very sweet.

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