In the Croatian language, some types of words change their form within a sentence depending on their role or, put simply, the context within a sentence. Some other types never change, no matter what. So, we differentiate between changeable and unchangeable types of words.

Types of words are formally called ‘parts of speech’. We decided to simply refer to them as types of words as we are trying to make our posts as little technical and as more understandable to the non-linguist audience as possible.

Changeable words in the Croatian language are:

– Nouns, e.g.: Ivan/Ivanu/Ivanom… (Ivan)
– Pronouns, e.g.: moj/moja/moje… (my)
– Adjectives, e.g.: lijep/lijepa/lijepo… (beautiful)
– Numbers, e.g.: jedan/jedna/jedno… (one)
– Verbs, e.g.: raditi/radim/radiš… (to work)

Unchangeable words in the Croatian language are:

– Prepositions, e.g.: između (between), iznad (above), s (with)…
– Adverbs, e.g.: jučer (yesterday), tiho (quietly), puno (a lot)…
– Particles, e.g.: da (yes), ne (no), čak (even)…
– Exclamations, e.g.: aha, halo, ej…
– Conjunctions, e.g.: i (and), ili (or), ali (but)…

Types of change that can happen with changeable words

a) Declension

Declension is changing the form of a word through grammatical cases. 
Types of words that can be declined are (1) nouns, (2) pronouns, (3) adjectives and (4) numbers.

For example, if you have ever heard Croatian people doing weird things to your name, this is because your name – being a noun – changes in cases. So, if you are, say, John, Croats would also say Johnu, Johna, Johnom… Don’t worry – they are not out of their minds, they are just using different “versions” of your name, based on the context within a sentence.

For example (click on the play button to hear the audio):

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b) Comparison

Comparison can happen with some adjectives and adverbs. Many languages have exactly the same thing. As the name suggests, it’s when you do this:

nov – new
noviji – newer
najnoviji – the newest

In the given example, noviji (newer) is called comparative and najnoviji (the newest) is the superlative of the “basic” adjective nov (new).

c) Conjugation

Verbs change according to tense (past, present, future), person (I, you, he, she…) and number (singular and plural). These changes of a verb are called conjugation.

For example:

Ja radim. – I work.
Ti radiš. – You work.
On radi. – He works.

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Learning Croatian continues… Next Tuesday we are learning about the genders in the Croatian language. If you want us to send you an email with the next Croatian grammar lesson, put your email address here.