EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 47 Of Flowers, Thorns and Counng Children 275 / 600
use forms of the singular dijete (djetet-), but what if you have 5 or more? Is there a
way to count more than 4 children? What about counting ljudi m pl. people, which
has plural only?
Luckily, there’s another set of numbers, used to count plural and collective nouns,
usually called collective numbers:
Collective numbers
both oboje 5 petero
2 dvoje 6 šestero
3 troje 7 sedm-ero
4 četvero etc.
The pattern for larger numbers is: take an ordinal adjective (e.g. osm-i), remove the
final -i and add -ero. You will sometimes hear versions of these numbers with -oro
(e.g. četvoro).®
They are used to with nouns in G-pl:
Imam petero djece G . I have five children.
Razgovarao sam s troje ljudi G . I talked to three people.
(You’ll sometimes also see and hear simply pet djece and like: this is both
uncommon and non-standard.)
The collective numbers are secondary: if you can use the normal numbers (as with
most numbers) you will not use the collective ones! Therefore, they are mostly used
to count the three nouns (ljudi, djeca and braća), but even with braća you will very
often hear and read:
Imam dva brata 24 . I have two brothers.
Collective numbers can be used, but for some reason people prefer dva brata to
dvoje braće.
However, when you have e.g. two friends or two guests of opposite sex, you have
to use collective numbers:
2 friends 2 guests
all-male dva prijatelja 24 dva gosta 24
all-female dvije prijateljice 24 dvije gošće 24
mixed (G-pl!) dvoje prijatelja G dvoje gostiju G
This is the solution to the ‘mixed-sex’ problem in counting. Pay attention that the
last form is in G-pl, while the first two are just ordinary forms used with numbers 2-4
(like G for nouns). They coincide with G-pl for the noun prijatelj friend (in writing,