EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 57 Whose, What Thing and What Like 333 / 600
Croatian makes no difference between such questions and which-questions (asking
what item from a given selection). In fact, the word koji is often translated as which
and I personally have problems when to use what and when which in English, since
my native language has no such distinction!
Croatian has no pronoun matching the English one. You can answer such questions
using the determining adjective only (in the right case, gender and number, of
course):
Koju jabuku A želiš? Which apple do you want?
— Zelenu A . The green one.
Koje vino A želiš? Which wine do you want?
— Crno A . Red. (lit. ‘black’)
Don’t forget that prepositions also go before the question word, but with these
questions, prepositions can be left out in answers:
Na kojem trgu DL je koncert N ? ‘Which city square is the concert on?’
— Na glavnom DL . On the main one.
— Glavnom DL . The main one.
Likewise, if the context is known, you can ask just:
Koju A želiš? Which one do you want?
The word to that can be added to most čiji, kakav (kakv-) and koji questions,
emphasizing they’re about something present, visible, close to speaker:
Čiju A to N knjigu A čitaš? Whose book are you reading? (I saw you reading it)
Kakvu A to N knjigu A čitaš? What kind of book are you reading? (I saw you reading it)
From the adjectives čiji and kakav (kakv-) there are the following generic adjectives
(sometimes called ‘pronouns’):
svačiji everybody’s
nečiji someone’s
ničiji nobody’s
svakakav (svakakv-) of every kind, diverse
nekakav (nekakv-) of some kind
nikakav (nikakv-) of no kind, of poor quality
The adjectives derived from kakav (kakv-) cannot be easily translated into English.
For example:
Nečiji pas N je pred ulazom I . Someone’s dog is in front of the entrance.
Nekakav pas N je pred ulazom I . A dog of some sort is in front of the entrance.
Adjectives above starting with ni- require the verb to be negated as well, as usual:
Ne vidim nikakvog psa A . I don’t see any dog. (lit. ‘I don’t see no kind of dog.’)
Here nikakav (nikakv-) has meaning close to English no, but keep in mind it requires
negation of the verb.
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