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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 62 The Friend I Saw: Relave Clauses 364 / 600

Forming relative clauses

nouns

svi everybody, all

adjectives in masc. used as pronouns

such as ostali the rest (of people)

netko somebody ®

nitko nobody ®

svatko everybody ®

nešto something

ništa nothing

svašta all kinds of things

sve everything, all

adjectives in neut. used as pronouns

such as ostalo the rest (of stuff)

to that, ovo this, ono

koji ...

tko ® ...

što ...

If you know German, you have likely noticed that it has more or less the same

system – the pronoun der which is mandatory and changes gender and case

according to the role in the clause. However, with adjectives/pronouns such as alles,

the pronoun was (which matches Croatian što exactly) must be used instead:

(German) Das ist alles, was ich weiß.

To je sve što znam. That’s all I know.

Other types of questions can be also used as relative clauses, relating to place and

time. For example:

Ovo N je mjesto N [gdje smo se upoznali]. This is the place [where we met for the

first time].

Occasionally, you’ll see a quite different construction of relative clauses: što used

after nouns as well, but always in that form, not changing cases. This is rare in

speech, at least mine, but it seems more common in poetry.

Since the pronoun što in such construction doesn’t show the role in the relative

clause, there’s often another personal pronoun in the clause that refers to the noun

as well, so you might see:

Ovo N su knjige N [što sam ih A kupio]. These are the books [I bought]. ®

3pl

lit. ‘These are the books što I bought them.’

Here ih (the 3rd pers. pl. pronoun in A) serves as the object of the clause, referring

to knjige books while the word što serves as a simple conjunction. Such additional

pronoun is never added if the role in the clause is being the subject.

Recall also the example song Jugo in 35 Tools and Means, With and Without; it

contains two such constructions:

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