EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 03 Objects 21 / 600
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 you 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).