EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 13 She Loves Me: Pronouns and Properes 78 / 600
On je student. He’s a (university) student.
English has only one word – student – for both male and female students. For most
such roles, Croatian has two words, one for male, another for female.
There’s no straight rule how male and female words relate, but most often, the
word for female is made by adding -ica to the word for male (the suffix -ica has
other uses as well):
male female
singer pjevač pjevačica
professor profesor profesorica ®
(univ.) student student studentica ®
teacher učitelj učiteljica
For example, if a female person is a student, you would say:
Vesna je studentica. Vesna is a (university) student.
Croatian has two words that correspond to English man:
čovjek man/human
muškarac (muškarc-) man (focus on masculinity)
You would use čovjek in all normal circumstances (you can and should use it in
generic sense, for someone you don’t know sex of), and the other word is used only
when it’s important that someone is male, e.g. when talking about how he looks:
Ivan je marljiv čovjek. Ivan is a hard-working man.
On je zgodan muškarac. He’s a handsome man.
For most animals (humans included) the default gender is masculine: you can use
masculine nouns when you have a mixed group, if you simply don’t know someone’s
sex or you want to speak about people or some animals in general. The masc.
gender is so generic that it can be sometimes used for women too:
Ana je dobar čovjek. lit. ‘Ana is a good man/human.’
Ona je novi profesor. She’s the new professor.
It’s all nice, but how to say I’m a student (male or female)? For that, we need
another personal pronoun introduced above (the N form, of course), and the right
verb form:
biti (je² +) be → pres-1 sam²
For example:
Ja sam student. I’m a student. (male)
Ja sam studentica. I’m a student. (female)