EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 63 Bigger and Beer: Comparaves 370 / 600
The last example uses s¨/sa¨ + I.
Finally, a few one-syllable adjectives have ‘total forms’, which are reduplicated and
have appended -cat. Most common are:
gol golcat all naked
nov novcat brand-new
pun puncat completely full
sam samcat all alone
Occasionally, you’ll see just the second part used (e.g. just novcat) with the same
meaning. They are, confusingly, sometimes also called ‘absolute superlatives’ in
some grammars. You cannot use this construction with any adjective – only few
one-syllable adjectives permit this.
When they are used before nouns, both parts change in case, gender and number:
Ovo N su ključevi N novog novcatog auta G . These are keys of a brand-new car. m
________
® In Serbia and most of Bosnia, the adjective happy has a bit different form srećan
(srećn-); the comparative is srećniji.
In everyday speech in many regions, including parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia,
višlji is used as the comparative of visok tall, high. This is not accepted as standard
anywhere, and sometimes it’s considered a hallmark of ‘uneducated’ speech.
Although što is colloquially replaced by šta, and such replacement is complete in
Bosnia and Serbia, in both the standard languages and the actual speech, it’s never
replaced in phrases što + comparative.
The phrase čim + comparative is specifically Croatian and sounds ungrammatical in
Serbia.
The verb pair uspoređ ivati (-uje) ~ usporediti («) compare has a slightly different
form in Serbia and most of Bosnia, without -s-, e.g. uporediti and so on.
• Something Possibly Interesting
There are basically two types of adjectives: most get -iji in comparative; a smaller
group gets -(j)i, with possible sound shifts, after they discard -ok, -ak and like. All
new adjectives get -iji, and the smaller group includes many adjectives with basic
meanings (wide, fast, deep etc.). The smaller group is likely the older one. It’s
interesting that some older cousins of Croatian, like Ancient Greek and Sanskrit,
have two ways to make comparatives too. This is very likely an ancient division.
Most older Croatian grammars list gori as the (irregular) comparative of zao (zl-)
evil. Such meaning of gori is archaic today.