EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 88 Weird Words and Construcons 485 / 600
moj prijatelj Igor my friend Igor → mog prijatelja Igora
teta Ana aunt Ana → tetu Anu ®
This also applies to the following nouns:
grad city rijeka river
For example (u¨ + DL):
grad Rijeka the City of Rijeka → u gradu Rijeci
grad Split the City of Split → u gradu Splitu
rijeka Drava the Drava river → u rijeci Dravi
Since a great majority of rivers have feminine names in Croatian, use of rijeka river
with masculine names of rivers is avoided. (Croatian so strongly prefers feminine
river names, that even names like the Thames and the Rhine are adapted as
feminine Temza and Rajna). You will mostly see ‘frozen’ masc. names of rivers, e.g.
u rijeci Dunav:
rijeka Dunav the Danube river → (?) u rijeci Dunavu
After most other nouns, only feminine names can change, but it’s optional – names
are usually not changed. Often used nouns are:
hotel hotel
jezero lake
kazalište theater ®
općina municipality ®
For example (again u¨ + DL):
hotel Panorama → u hotelu Panorama / u hotelu Panorami
kazalište Komedija → u kazalištu Komedija / u kazalištu Komediji
You will see changed feminine names now and then. However, masculine names are
always ‘frozen’:
hotel Westin → u hotelu Westin
jezero Jarun → u jezeru Jarun
kazalište Kerempuh → u kazalištu Kerempuh
Bear in mind that ‘freezing’ happens only if a general noun is before the name, if the
name is on it’s own, it of course always changes, e.g. u Westinu, u Jarunu, etc.
Standard Croatian prescribes that both nouns have to be always changed, but it’s
rare, even in writing (e.g. the form u hotelu Westin is more than 100 times more
common than u hotelu Westinu on the Internet).
Occasionally, you’ll see a kind of reversal of the structure described above, where a
proper noun (i.e. a name) describes a common noun; an example is this tube of
mayonnaise: