EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 05 Accusave Case 29 / 600
Croatian has a special verb for knowing people (and cities), like French connaître.
(Also, this is not an error, the verb poznavati has a different stress in infinitive and
present. Such shifts specific for individual verbs is what makes stress complex in
Croatian.)
Again, we can use the nouns listed above as objects without any change:
Ana gleda film. Ana is watching a movie.
Režem kruh. I’m cutting bread. ®
rezati
Goran pije sok. Goran is drinking juice.
piti
Ivana kuha ručak. Ivana is cooking lunch.
Čekam vlak. I’m waiting for a train. ®
However, nouns that end in a consonant, but stand for people or animals do change
in accusative. You must add an -a to them. This applies to e.g. following nouns:
brat brother
čovjek man/human
galeb (sea)gull
konj horse
muž husband
sin son
Let’s put them to use:
Ana gleda konja. Ana is watching a horse.
Ivan čeka brata. Ivan is waiting for his brother.
Goran vidi galeba. Goran sees a seagull.
The accusative ending applies to names as well:
Ana čeka Gorana. Ana is waiting for Goran.
Josip poznaje Ivana. Josip knows Ivan.
poznavati
This applies to names having more than one word (e.g. with the last name) and to
non-native names as well – each word in the (masculine) name has to get an -a:
Čekamo Ivana Horvata. We’re waiting for Ivan Horvat.
Gledam Brada Pitta. I’m watching Brad Pitt.
When you hear or read a sentence where names are expected to be in the
accusative case, you have to be able to work them back to the default (nominative)
forms. You simply cannot understand Croatian without understanding cases – that’s
why I have introduced them from the start:
Čekam Ivana. I’m waiting for Ivan. (Ivan = male)
Čekam Ivanu. I’m waiting for Ivana. (Ivana = female)
When endings are added to certain nouns ending in a consonant, they don’t get
added to their nominative form, but to a usually slightly different form. One
example is pas dog. In the accusative case, it looks like this:
Ana gleda psa. Ana is watching a dog.