EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 46 More than Four Things 269 / 600
Imam dvadeset i jednu jabuku A . I have 21 apples. (A)
Imam pedeset i tri jabuke 24 . I have 53 apples. (G)
In the same manner, rules for 1-4 don’t apply to numbers 11, 12, 13 and 14: they
don’t end with any of the words above, but with -naest, which makes them
behave like 5 or 10. (This applies to English as well: 12 is twelve – does it end in
two in speech?)
The number zero also behaves as a number greater than 4 (note that English requires
here plural as well!):
Imam nula jabuka G . I have 0 apples.
For numbers with decimal points (in Croatian, a comma is often used instead of the
decimal point) it again depends on the last word:
Imam dva cijela pet kilograma G . I have 2.5 kilos. (G-pl)
Imam dva cijela jedan kilogram A . I have 2.1 kilos. (A)
Instead of cijela, words točka dot and zarez comma ® are also used.
Now, we can finally say how old someone is. In Croatian, the primary way to specify
age is to say that someone ‘has years’:
Imam dvadeset i jednu godinu A . I’m 21 years old. (lit. ‘I have 21 years.’)
Goran N ima osam godina G . Goran is 8 years old. (lit. ‘Goran has 8 years.’)
If you know some Spanish, you will notice it uses exactly the same construction to
express this (Goran tiene 8 años).
Alternatively, ‘having years’ is sometimes expressed with the person in DL, and years
in N; second position words usually split number + year:
Dvadeset i jedna N mi DL je godina N . (the same meaning, but less frequent) 1
Goranu DL je osam godina G . (the same meaning, but less frequent)
This is rarer than using imati have, but you’ll sometimes read and hear it, especially
in literature and songs.®
To ask how old someone is, use again the question word koliko how many
(sometimes stressed as koliko) – as this is a quantity adverb, the word it refers to
(here godina year) must be in genitive plural:
Koliko imaš godina G ? How old are you? (lit. ‘How many years do you have?’)
— Osam. Eight.
The same holds for any question about quantity of something countable, even if one
who is asking knows it’s less than five:
Koliko imaš jabuka G ? How many apples do you have?
— Tri. Three.
You’ll sometimes see the DL for age in questions as well: