Dialogue: Buying Groceries

Buying groceries at the corner shop is one of the very first real conversations a learner can hold, and it exercises a feature English simply does not have: the partitive genitive. When you ask for some bread or some milk — an unspecified amount — the noun goes into the genitive: kruha, mlijeka. Add a few numerals with food (which themselves bend the noun's case), the polite availability question Imate li…? ("Do you have…?"), and the all-purpose price question Koliko košta? ("How much does it cost?"), and you have the whole grammar of a shop visit. This annotated dialogue between a customer (kupac) and a shopkeeper (prodavač), conducted in polite Vi, walks through each piece.

The dialogue

— Kupac: Dobar dan! Imate li svježeg kruha? — Prodavač: Imamo, naravno. Koliko vam treba? — Kupac: Dajte mi jedan kruh i još malo peciva. — Prodavač: Izvolite. Još nešto? — Kupac: Trebam i mlijeka. Imate li ono bez laktoze? — Prodavač: Imamo. Koliko litara? — Kupac: Dvije litre, molim. I šest jaja. — Prodavač: Evo. Želite li još što? — Kupac: Da, sto grama sira. Koliko košta? — Prodavač: Sir je dvanaest eura kilogram. — Kupac: Dobro. Koliko je sve skupa? — Prodavač: Sve skupa osam eura i pedeset centi.

Grammar in action

The partitive genitive — kruha, mlijeka. This is the headline feature with no English parallel. When you ask for some of an uncountable thing — without a number, an unspecified portion — the noun goes into the genitive: kruha (some bread, from kruh), mlijeka (some milk, from mlijeko), sira (some cheese, from sir). The case alone carries the meaning "an amount of". Contrast trebam kruh (I need the bread / a loaf, accusative, a whole definite thing) with trebam kruha (I need some bread, genitive, an unspecified quantity).

Why uncounted amounts, quantity words like malo and puno, and measure words all pull the genitive is laid out on the partitive and quantity genitive.

Imate li…? — asking whether they have it. To ask if a shop has something, Croatian fronts the verb and adds the question particle li: Imate li…? ("Do you have…?"). It is the polite Vi form of imati. What follows often goes into the genitive too, because you are asking about some of it: imate li svježeg kruha? (do you have any fresh bread?), where both the adjective svježeg and the noun kruha are genitive.

The full shop-and-money phrasebook — greetings, requests, paying — is on shopping and money.

Numerals with food — dvije litre, šest jaja. Numbers govern the case of what they count, and groceries are where you meet this daily. After dva/dvije, tri, četiri the noun takes the paucal (dvije litre — two litres); from pet upward it jumps to the genitive plural (šest jaja — six eggs, sto grama — a hundred grams). So the same noun looks different depending on how many you buy.

How the paucal and genitive plural divide up the number line — and how prices fall out of it — is on numbers in use and in detail on numeral government.

Koliko košta? — asking the price and the total. The everyday price question is Koliko košta? ("How much does it cost?"). To ask for the total you say Koliko je sve skupa? ("How much is it all together?"). Note that koliko ("how much / how many") itself behaves like a high number — the noun after it goes into the genitive plural: koliko litara? (how many litres?), koliko eura? (how many euros?).

Vocabulary

Culture & register note

Key Takeaways

• Uncounted amounts take the partitive genitive with no number: kruha, mlijeka, sira (= some bread/milk/cheese) — versus accusative kruh (the whole loaf).
• Ask whether a shop stocks something with Imate li…?; what follows is often genitive too (imate li svježeg kruha?).
• Numerals govern case: paucal after 2–4 (dvije litre), genitive plural after 5+ (šest jaja, sto grama).
• Koliko behaves like a big number — the noun after it is genitive plural (koliko litara?).
• Ask the price with Koliko košta? and the total with Koliko je sve skupa?; prices are in eura and centi.