03 Objects

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It’s nice to be able to say Ana is reading or I’m cooking, but it would be even better to be able to say what you are reading or cooking!

Croatian is a language with grammatical cases. It means that words change a bit when used in sentences. For instance, when you express what you are reading or even whom you’re waiting for – that’s called object. This ‘role’ requires a form of a noun that’s usually called accusative case or sometimes the object case. Since accusative is a long word, it’s often shortened to just A.

(Nouns are words standing for a more or less specific object, person or idea, something that can perform an action, e.g. sister, cat, or can be an object of an action, e.g. you can eat a pizza).

Not all nouns change in accusative in the same way. Some don’t change at all. A large group of nouns in Croatian end in -a; they all change that ending to -u in accusative. For instance:

baka grandmother jabuka  ▶  apple juha soup ® kava coffee ® knjiga  ▶  book mama  ▶  Mom pjesma  ▶  song

riba  ▶  fish sestra  ▶  sister tata  ▶  Dad teta aunt televizija TV ® večera  ▶  supper, late dinner voda  ▶  water

The default, ‘dictionary’ forms listed above are also considered a ‘grammatical case’ and are called nominative (just N for short).

We are now able to say:

Ana čita knjigu.  ▶  Ana is reading a book.

Kuham juhu. I’m cooking soup.

Ivan pijepiti kavu. Ivan is drinking coffee.

Jedemjesti večeru. I’m eating supper.

Pijempiti vodu.  ▶  I’m drinking water.

Warning. English prefers using ‘light’ or ‘generic’ verbs like make in many circumstances, so you usually make coffee, make dinner and so on. Croatian has almost no such verbs, and you have to use always specific verbs – for example, kuhati cook if you prepare food or drink by cooking.

In sentences like Ana čita knjigu, the word Ana is called subject. So, the Croatian N case is sometimes called the subject case:

subject ↓		object ↓
Ana	čita	knjigu.
N		A

In English, the word order is almost always subject-verb-object. It’s also the most common order in Croatian, but it’s not always so, as you’ll see later.

If you are now puzzled where the English a (in a book) got lost – it does not exist in Croatian, there’s no difference between a book and the book in Croatian. (I’ll show later how you can express a or the if you really need it.)

The majority of verbs require just objects in accusative. For instance:

čekati wait gledati watch imati have, possess

slušati listen tražiti search, look for trebati need

Let’s put them to use:

Ana gleda televiziju. Ana is watching TV.

Trebam kavu. I need coffee. ®

Ivan čeka baku. Ivan is waiting for his grandmother.

Slušam pjesmu. I’m listening to a song.

Goran traži knjigu. Goran is looking for the book.

Unlike the English verb have, Croatian imati is a perfectly regular and simple verb:

Ivan ima knjigu.  ▶  Ivan has a book.

While in English, verbs listen and wait use prepositions to and for (you wait for something), in Croatian no such special words are needed, you just use nouns in accusative. The same goes for tražiti.

You could also see that in English we have his grandmother while in Croatian it’s just baka (in A). Words like his, my, her are less used in Croatian and are often implied. (English also implies possession in some circumstances: it’s enough to say I’m at home – it’s implied that you’re at your home, not at home that belongs to someone else. When it’s somebody else’s home, then you would say e.g. I’m at your home.)

This change of ending applies to loanwords (that is, words taken from other languages) as well:

Goran jedejesti pizzu. Goran is eating a pizza.

There are also a few words that must adapt in English as well, depending on their role: you cannot say “I’m listening to she”, but I’m listening to her. It’s just that in Croatian, basically all nouns must adapt.

The accusative change -a → -u applies to personal names as well:

Ivan čeka Anu.  ▶  Ivan is waiting for Ana.

Goran sluša Ivanu. Goran is listening to Ivana.

Therefore, personal names in Croatian have many forms, as other nouns do, and some of these forms may coincide with other names – as you will later discover. However, there’s always the base, default form – e.g. Ana and Ivana.

Most personal names that end in -a in Croatian are female names. However, there are couple of male names that end in -a as well, e.g. Jakša, Luka, Nikola and Saša. They behave exactly the same:

Ana traži Luku. Ana is looking for Luka.

There are few Croatian female names that don’t end in -a: they don’t change at all, ever. Such names are e.g. Ines and Nives. For example:

Ivan čeka Ines. Ivan is waiting for Ines.

A more exhaustive list of various names, including male names in -a and female names not in -a, can be found in L1 Common Names. ®

(I’ll explain how to use nouns not ending in -a, including masculine names like Ivan, as objects in the following chapters.)

Finally, I’ll explain how to ask what someone is doing (at the moment, or generally). While English has the special verb do, Croatian uses the verb raditi work in a generic sense. You should start such questions with the word što  ▶  what:

Što Ana radi?  ▶  What is Ana doing? (lit. ‘working’)

— Gleda televiziju.  ▶  She’s watching TV.

As you can see, there’s nothing special about questions in Croatian: no special word order, no special rules. You just have to start them with the right question-word. I’ve also given the literal (lit.) meaning, in quotes; of course, it really means what is doing.

We can here answer only with a verb, no pronouns (e.g. ona she) are needed, since it’s clear who we’re talking about. Generally, Croatian prefers very short answers.

To ask directly what someone is doing, use the 2nd person form radiš:

Što radiš?  ▶  What are you doing? (to a single person!)

— Čitam knjigu.  ▶  I’m reading a book.

This form is used only when you ask a single person, someone you’re familiar with, your family member, co-worker, etc; for your superiors, people you don’t know personally, other forms are used (they will be explained later).

In many regions, šta  ▶  is used colloquially instead of što®, so you’ll very often read and hear šta radiš, etc. (try it with Google™).

One more remark: there are other languages out there that have grammatical cases, and call one of them accusative, e.g. Finnish, German, Greek, Latin and so on. The accusative case in all languages tends to be similar, but details can be different. If you know a lot how to use the accusative case in e.g. German, be aware that not all of it applies to Croatian.

________

® Instead of kava, a slightly different word kafa is common in most parts of Bosnia and Serbia. In Bosnia, the form kahva is used as well. Instead of juha, supa is common in these countries, and in some regions of Croatia as well.

Standard Serbian insists that the word for TV must be stressed as televizija (you will hear it on the Serbian Public TV); regardless of it, a great majority of speakers in Serbia uses the same stress in that word as in Croatia. However, you will occasionally hear televizija in parts of Croatia and Bosnia.

While many names are common in Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia, there are some country-specific names. Actually, there are some names that are specific for a part of Croatia, and uncommon elsewhere – despite the total population of Croatia being about 4 million.

The form šta what is considered standard in Serbia, Montenegro and most of Bosnia. It’s very common in Croatia (including the cities of Zagreb, Split, Rijeka, etc) but not standard. In Northwestern Croatia, many people colloquially use kaj for what (you can hear it in Zagreb too). In parts of the coast, especially islands and Istria, another word is often used colloquially for what: ča.

↓ Something Possibly Interesting (click to show)

If we would pay attention to tones in words, object forms of some words would be a bit more complicated to create. For instance, the noun voda water has the rising tone in the nominative case, but the falling tone in the accusative vodu. However, the noun riba fish has the falling tone in all forms. This is not a major issue, since many people in Croatia have no differences in tone, or have non-standard tones anyway, so we’re used to various ‘accents’.

In Russian, this is a major issue. There are no tones in Russian, but the stress often moves in various forms of one word. For instance, Russian water is N вода, A воду. When written in Croatian spelling, it’s N vodа, A vodu – which seems identical to Croatian, but there’s a catch: since the o in N is unstressed, it’s pronounced reduced, much closer to the a sound, while in A it’s stressed and pronounced like o! Russian pronunciation is more complex than Croatian.

The term accusative comes from a bad Latin translation of a Greek term – originally it had nothing with accusing – but it stuck.

↓ Exercise (click to show)

Use the following nouns:

banana banana

poruka message

and the words you have already learned, to fill in right forms of nouns:

Show a pop-up Croatian keyboard

Goran jede . Goran is eating a banana.

Ana piše . Ana is writing a message.

Ivan čeka . Ivan is waiting for Ines.

Josip traži . Josip is looking for the book.

Ona jede . She’s eating pizza.

On pije . He’s drinking coffee.

Jedem . I’m eating an apple.

Next, complete the following sentences:

. She’s reading a book.

Ana . Ana has a sister.

. I’m listening to a song.

. I’m reading a message.

. I’m waiting for the supper.

. I’m drinking water.

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