EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 43 And, Or, But: Basic Conjuncons 252 / 600
This construction is more common in writing, a bit less in speech. The important
thing is that Croatian ali cannot be used in this construction. The same difference
exists in German and Spanish, which has been always a bit of a problem for native
English speakers:
English but
Croatian ali nego
German aber sondern
Spanish pero sino
While ali connects two clauses, with nego you don’t have to repeat anything from
the part before it, just state the ‘correction’ (of course, you can repeat the verb if
you want to).
However, there are cases when you can and must use ali (and Spanish pero) – when
you don’t completely correct what is said, but talk about an exception:
Ne volim serije A , ali mi DL se sviđa Westworld N . I don’t like (TV) series, but I like 1
the Westworld.
(Note how Croatian uses different verbs here; you could use voljeti (...) in both parts
too.)
Another example is a complete correction vs something just unexpected or
uncommon:
Janet N nije iz Hrvatske G , nego iz Kanade G . Janet isn’t from Croatia, but from Canada.
Janet N nije iz Hrvatske G , ali zna hrvatski A . Janet isn’t from Croatia, but she ‘knows’
Croatian. (i.e. speaks)
If you’re unsure about ali vs nego, there’s a simple test: if you can rephrase the
sentence with instead (e.g. we went to a restaurant instead) or with rather, you
should use nego instead of ali.
There’s a simple way to emphasize that all
subjects/actions/objects/places/whatever are involved, like in English both... and....
In Croatian, simply an i¨ is placed before each emphasized item:
I Ivan N i Ana N rade. Both Ivan and Ana are working.
Sobe N su i u prizemlju DL i na katu DL . The rooms are both on the ground floor and on
the first floor.
However, if you want to make an emphasis in a sentence where the verb is negated,
you should use negative conjunctions ni¨ instead, but the verb is still negated:
Ni Ivan N ni Ana N ne rade. Neither Ivan nor Ana are working.
Sobe N nisu ni u prizemlju DL ni na katu DL . The rooms are neither on the ground floor
nor on the first floor.