EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / A7 Stress (u/c) 522 / 600
"A" "B" "C"
N riba žena voda
DL ribi ženi vodi
G ribē ženē vodē
A
ribu ženu vodu
u-ribu u- ženu u-vodu
V ribo ženo vodo
NA-pl ribe žene vode
We see one thing all nouns have in common: the vocative case has the "automatic"
falling stress – no vowels are underlined. Another thing that's not obvious from the
usual spelling – the case ending in G is a long e.
The nouns in the group "B" are boring: the stress stays on the same syllable and is
same in all forms (except in the vocative, but that's a special form anyway).
The group "A" gets interesting when an unstressed preposition (e.g. u) is placed
before the noun: the stress "spreads" to it, i.e. moves one syllable to the left, but
gets the rising intonation.
This stress shift we still see in such nouns is called Neoštokavian stress shift. It's the
origin of the rising intonation in the Standard Croatian: whenever (well... almost
whenever) there was another syllable before the stressed syllable with the falling
intonation, the stress moved left, and changed the intonation. It also happened
centuries ago to nouns like žena. There are still regions in Croatia where that noun
keeps the older stress, žena (we are sure that stress is older because such nouns in
Russian have the stress at the "old" position as well).
This is why a rising stress cannot appear on the last syllable – there have to be one
syllable after it, one that had the original (falling) stress. We can simply show what
has happened and what still happens:
Neoštokavian stress shift
centuries ago žena → žena
we see today po + ribu → po-ribu
Such stresses are called 'new' (this is relative: they are centuries old), hence the neoin
Neoštokavian.
This shift happens only to falling stresses. They were transformed almost always
when they were not on the first syllable – this is the reason for the classic rule #1.
Now, we examine the nouns in the group "C". They are completely unlike "A" or "B"
nouns: their stress varies according to noun case. In the accusative case, if there's