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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 59 Knowing and Telling: Content and Noun Clauses 346 / 600

The second clause is in the past tense: we’re not reporting what somebody else said,

but what was. There are a lot of similar ways to comment content, e.g. with the

following words instead of dobro:

bolje better

čudno strange, weird

glupo stupid

jasno clear

loše bad

očito obvious

strašno terrible

šteta too bad

You can use many other adjectives to comment on content, including colloquial

super great and more. You can add also who thinks/feels that in DL:

Ani DL je jasno da... It’s clear to Ana that...

Ani DL je bilo jasno da... It was clear to Ana that...

There’s one special rule – if you just comment (without who feels/thinks in DL) in the

present tense, you can leave je² out (I’m not completely sure if that’s accepted in

standard or not, but it’s quite widespread):

Dobro da ne pada kiša N . It’s good it’s not raining.

There are two very common and similar expressions, with stronger meaning than

dobro da...:

srećom da...

fortunately

sva sreća da...

The expression sva sreća da... is especially common to express that something

might have been much worse (e.g. a building collapsed, but, fortunately, nobody was

in it at that moment):

Sva sreća da ne pada kiša N . Fortunately, it’s not raining.

You can express feelings with dative phrases involving drago and žao:

Ani DL je žao da... Ana was sorry that...

Ani DL je bilo drago da... Ana was glad/happy that...

You can like content (here content clauses are again subjects):

Sviđa mi DL se da je Ana N došla. I like that Ana came.

1 | doći past-f

You can also refer to the content expressed before using the general pronoun to.

That’s often used in conversation, but also common in writing:

Ana N je kupila auto A . Ana bought a car.

m

— Nisam to A znao. I didn’t know that.

You can use to and a content clause anywhere, even after prepositions (you have to

change to into the right case):

Razgovarali smo o tome DL da je Ana N kupila auto A . We discussed about Ana m

buying a car. (lit. ‘about that Ana has bought a car’)

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