EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 31 First, Second: Ordinals 181 / 600
prva crta front line (lit. ‘first line’)
There’s one instance when ordinals are used less than in English: when you just
enumerate things in no particular order, e.g. when you talk about your sisters:
Imam tri sestre 24 . I have three sisters.
Jedna N radi u banci DL . One works in a bank.
Druga N studira. Another is in university.
Treća N je još u školi DL . The third one is still in school.
The first word is just an numeral adjective (used as a pronoun). The second one
means both another and second. After it, there’s no other option but to use ordinal
adjectives. The point is: there’s no first sister. But there’s the third one. You’ll find
out that native speakers prefer also speaking about one son and the other one,
rather than about the first son and the second one, and so on. You should use the
ordinal prvi first only when you want really to say that someone or somebody is at
the first position. After it, it doesn’t matter, since there’s no difference in Croatian.
The opposites of prvi first are:
posljednji
last
zadnji
(The adjective posljednji is a bit more formal.) An example for zadnji:
Ana N živi na zadnjem katu DL . Ana lives on the top floor. (lit. ‘last floor’)
While in English, you can just use first as an adverb (e.g. first, you mix flour with
eggs...), in Croatian you must use its ‘adverbial’ form, that is, neuter singular prvo.
Instead of posljednje, the form na kraju is used in meaning finally.
However, in English, finally can also mean after so much time, after a long wait and
so on, like in we’re finally done. In that meaning, Croatian uses another word:
konačno finally (after a long time)
na kraju finally (as the last step)
This corresponds to Spanish por fin (konačno) vs. finalmente (na kraju).
________
® In Serbia, ordinal numbers are usually not used for months (except when reading
dates written as numbers); specific names – different than Croatian – are used even
in the colloquial speech:
1 januar January
2 februar February
3 mart March
4 april April
5 maj May
6 jun / juni June
7 jul / juli July
8 avgust August
9 septembar (septembr-) September
10 oktobar (oktobr-) October
11 novembar (novembr-) November
12 decembar (decembr-) December