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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 29 Plural of Masculine Nouns and Adjecves 171 / 600

traditionally spelled without the t. On the contrary, more recent Croatian

orthography manuals mandate writing tc – and here’s a crazy thing – dc if the N has

a d! So, be prepared to see all possible variants®:

N DL N-pl A-pl

redak retku

reci

retci retke

redci

početak početku počeci

početci

početke

The most recent Croatian orthography manual allows also c-only forms for some

frequent nouns, such as:

gubitak (gubitk-) loss

ostatak (ostatk-) remainder

početak (početk-) beginning

predak (pretk-) ancestor

trenutak (trenutk-) moment

zadatak (zadatk-) task

But the noun redak (retk-) is not one of them! I expect there will be more changes in

the future regarding this group of nouns. (Google for forms preci, pretci and

predci on the .hr domain, to check frequencies. Don’t forget that the most regular

form – pretci – is non-standard, according to the latest manual.)

What about adjectives? They are much simpler – they just get the following endings

(equal to short endings for nouns) without any complications:

adjectives N-pl A-pl

masculine -i -e

This applies to past forms of verbs as well. For example:

Gledam velike brodove A . I’m watching big ships.

Goran N ima prljave laktove A . Goran has dirty elbows.

Psi N su bili gladni N . Dogs were hungry.

________

® Instead of tanjur plate, a slightly different word tanjir is used in Serbia and most of

Bosnia. In the coastal areas of Croatia, you’ll often hear pjat or pijat for plate.

Instead of vrt garden, the word bašta is much more common in Serbia for garden,

and it’s used alongside vrt in Bosnia.

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

kut, the word ugao (ugl-) is used for angle, corner in Serbia. That word is used in

Bosnia too, but you can find also kut in Bosnia.

Instead of gumb, the word dugme (dugmet-) is used for button in Bosnia and

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