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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 18 This and That 109 / 600

(takv-) – they are often used interchangeably by Croatians.

English has specific time adverbs for ‘on, during this day’ (today) and ‘this night’

(tonight). Croatian has a bit expanded scheme. They all end in -s:

danas today

noćas tonight

jutros this morning

večeras this evening

For example:

Večeras idemo u restoran A . We’re going to the restaurant this evening.

ići

The word to is also used in the phrase to jest (where jest is an archaic form of je²,

the pres-3 of biti).

Another demonstrative, tako, is used in another frequent phrase, i tako dalje. Both

are very common expressions, so they have standard abbreviations (the periods are

mandatory; matching English abbreviations are also given):

phrase

to jest that is

i tako dalje and so on

abbreviated

tj. i.e.

itd. etc.

________

® Instead of vlak train, the word voz is used in Serbia and most of Bosnia. Instead of

kuhati, the form kuvati is used in Serbia, and in parts of Bosnia and Croatia

(however, it’s not standard in Croatian).

In Serbia, instead of trebam olovku, the construction treba mi olovka is used. It’s

also used in Croatia. It will be explained in the following chapters.

• Something Possibly Interesting

English the is basically just a worn down, reduced version of that that somehow

became obligatory before many nouns and so became an ‘article’. Many languages,

from Croatian to Hindi and Korean, have no articles whatsoever. This map in the

World Atlas of Language Structures illustrates the distribution of languages with and

without articles: Definite Articles.

In Italian, you have to use an article before my friend – either indefinite un mio

amico or definite il mio amico. Overall, Croatian grammar is much closer to

Romance languages than to English.

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