EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 45 Quanes and Existence 264 / 600
dovoljno enough nedovoljno not enough
While English distinguishes few (for countable nouns) vs. little (for uncountable
ones), not such distinction exists in Croatian – you can use the adverbs above for
both – but you still need to pay attention to put countable nouns in G-pl and
uncountable ones in G! Then, there are two words that mean the same:
puno
much, many, a lot of
mnogo
The word puno is more colloquial than mnogo. These words can be used with both
countable and uncountable nouns, but the nouns should be in genitive singular (if
uncountable) or plural (if countable):
Imamo premalo kruha G . (G) We have too little bread.
Imamo puno jabuka G . (G-pl) We have a lot of apples.
Such quantities – if only a genitive is used and if a quantity adverb is used – act as
being neuter singular, so verbs and other words must be set accordingly if such
quantities are used as subjects:
Puno ljudi G je bilo ovdje. A lot of people were here.
This is quite unlike English! You can use personal pronouns instead of nouns (again in
G-pl, there’s no change in grammar of other parts):
Puno ih G je bilo ovdje. A lot of them were here.
As you can see, you can use the short forms of pers. pronouns, but they must be at
the second position. Unlike English, words like puno a lot can be separated from the
nouns and pronouns, without much change in meaning:
Puno je ljudi G ovdje.
Ovdje ih G je puno.
3pl
It’s obvious that puno refers to ljudi and ih, since the noun and the pronoun are in
G-pl.
There are two more words, used to for indefinite amounts of countable nouns only;
they behave grammatically exactly as other quantity adverbs:
nekoliko several
par a couple of
For example:
Imamo nekoliko jabuka G . We have several apples.
Par ljudi G je bilo pred kućom I . A couple of people were in front of the house.
(Many Croatian language manuals condemn using par for anything than exactly two,
but, like in English, a couple of can be more than a pair. There’s also a noun par
meaning couple, pair, but these words don’t behave the same; more in the following
3pl