Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić (1874–1938), often called "the Croatian Andersen," wrote Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića ("The Strange Adventures of Hlapić the Apprentice") in 1913. She died in 1938, so the novel is in the public domain, and the lines below are a genuine quotation of its famous opening with attribution. For the learner this is a gift: children's prose from a master stylist is grammatically simple but completely natural, and almost every sentence is a textbook example of the workhorse tense of Croatian narration — the perfect, with its participle agreeing in gender and number. Read it once for the story of the small, cheerful shoemaker's apprentice, and again for the grammar.
The text
Bio je neki mali postolarski šegrt, koji nije imao ni oca ni majke.
There was once a little shoemaker's apprentice, who had neither father nor mother.
Zvao se Hlapić.
He was called Hlapić.
Hlapić je bio još malen kao lakat, a veseo kao ptica.
Hlapić was still small as an elbow, and merry as a bird.
Cijeli je dan sjedio na malom postolarskom stocu, koji je imao tri noge, i cijeli je dan zabijao klince u čizme i šivao cipele.
All day long he sat on a little cobbler's stool that had three legs, and all day long he hammered tacks into boots and stitched shoes.
Tako je živio Hlapić kod majstora Mrkonje i nije mu bilo dobro.
So Hlapić lived at Master Mrkonja's, and he was not well off there.
The perfect tense: bio je, imao, sjedio, živio
The narration runs almost entirely on the perfect tense, which is the normal past tense of everyday and narrative Croatian. The perfect is a two-part (analytic) tense: the present-tense clitic auxiliary je / su (from biti, "to be") plus the l-participle — the past participle ending in -o, -la, -lo, -li…. So bio je = "(he) was," (je) imao = "(he) had," (je) sjedio = "(he) sat," (je) živio = "(he) lived." Croatian, unlike English, has no separate simple past in living speech — where English chooses between "lived" and "has lived," Croatian uses this one perfect for both.
Bio je neki mali postolarski šegrt.
There was a little shoemaker's apprentice. (perfect: bio = l-participle of biti + je = auxiliary)
Cijeli je dan sjedio i zabijao klince.
All day he sat and hammered tacks. (two l-participles, sjedio and zabijao, sharing one je)
Gender agreement on the participle: bio, bila, bilo
This is the feature English speakers most often forget. The l-participle is not a fixed word — it agrees in gender and number with the subject, exactly like an adjective. Hlapić is masculine, so it is bio ("was"), imao ("had"), sjedio ("sat"), all ending in -o. A girl would be bila, imala, sjedila (feminine -la); a thing or a neuter noun would be bilo; a group would be bili / bile. In the line nije mu bilo dobro ("he was not well off"), the participle is the neuter bilo because the construction is impersonal — there is no masculine or feminine subject for it to agree with.
Hlapić je bio veseo kao ptica.
Hlapić was merry as a bird. (masculine subject → bio)
Djevojčica je bila vesela kao ptica.
The little girl was merry as a bird. (feminine subject → bila)
Nije mu bilo dobro.
He was not well off. (impersonal → neuter bilo)
Basic coordination: i, pa, a
Children's prose builds long sentences by stringing clauses together with three small conjunctions, and they are not interchangeable. i is plain "and," joining things on equal footing: sjedio i zabijao klince ("sat and hammered tacks"), and in our excerpt it links the whole final clause — živio kod majstora Mrkonje *i nije mu bilo dobro ("lived at Master Mrkonja's *and was not well off"). pa is "and then / and so," adding a consequence or the next step in sequence: pobjegao je pa otišao u svijet ("he fled and then went off into the world"). a is the contrastive "and / but / whereas," setting two things gently against each other: malen kao lakat, a veseo kao ptica ("small as an elbow, but merry as a bird"). The choice of connective is the difference between mere addition (i), consequence (pa), and contrast (a).
Hlapić je bio malen, a veseo.
Hlapić was small, yet merry. (a = contrast — small, but cheerful all the same)
Pobjegao je u noći pa otišao u svijet.
He fled in the night and then went off into the world. (pa = and then, the next step)
Sjedio je i radio cijeli dan.
He sat and worked all day. (i = plain 'and', equal footing)
Direct speech: introducing a character's words
Children's stories run on dialogue, and Croatian marks direct speech simply. The reported words are set off by a dash or quotation marks, and the speech-verb tag (reče, "said"; upita, "asked") can come before, after, or inside the quotation. In the lines that follow our excerpt, Hlapić's master speaks; the pattern is the same one a learner needs for any quoted line. Note that Croatian conventionally uses the dash for dialogue and the low-high curly quotes „…” for embedded quotation, and that the speech verb often inverts with its subject: reče Hlapić ("said Hlapić"), not Hlapić reče in the tag.
— Hlapiću, dođi ovamo! — reče majstor Mrkonja.
'Hlapić, come here!' said Master Mrkonja. (direct speech: dash + inverted tag reče majstor)
Hlapić pomisli: „Pobjeći ću u svijet.”
Hlapić thought: 'I will run off into the world.' (embedded quotation in „…” curly quotes)
Vocabulary gloss
| Word | Form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| bio je | perfect of biti, masc. sg. | (he) was / there was |
| šegrt | noun, masc. nom. sg. | apprentice |
| postolarski | adjective, masc. | shoemaker's, cobbler's |
| zvao se | perfect of zvati se | (he) was called / his name was |
| malen | adjective, masc. | small, little |
| lakat | noun, masc. | elbow (here: a unit of length, a cubit) |
| sjedio | l-participle of sjediti | sat |
| zabijao | l-participle of zabijati | hammered, drove in |
| klince | acc. pl. of klinac | tacks, small nails |
| čizme | acc. pl. of čizma | boots |
| majstor | noun, masc. | master (craftsman), boss |
A register note: this is plainly (literary), but the very plainest, most accessible literary Croatian — early-twentieth-century children's prose. Almost nothing here is dated. The one mild archaism is šegrt ("apprentice"), a word still understood but no longer common now that the guild trades it described have faded; a modern child would more likely meet it in this very book than in life.
How the grammar serves the passage
Brlić-Mažuranić writes for children, so she uses the clearest tools the language has, and that clarity is exactly what makes the passage such a good teacher. The perfect tense carries the whole narrative with no fuss, and its participles — bio, imao, sjedio, živio — quietly drill gender agreement on every line. The little conjunctions i, pa, a chain the events into the long, breathing sentences of storytelling while keeping addition, sequence, and contrast distinct. And the dialogue introduces direct speech in its simplest form. A learner who can read these five sentences can read most narrative Croatian: this is the grammatical backbone of the language, presented at its gentlest.
Common Mistakes
❌ Hlapić je bila malen.
Agreement error — Hlapić is masculine, so the participle must be bio, not the feminine bila.
✅ Hlapić je bio malen.
Hlapić was small. (masculine participle bio)
❌ Zvao Hlapić se.
Clitic error — the reflexive se is a second-position clitic; with the participle first it is zvao se, never zvao Hlapić se.
✅ Zvao se Hlapić.
He was called Hlapić. (se in second position)
❌ Bio malen, i veseo (using i for the contrast).
Wrong connective — small versus merry is a contrast, so Croatian uses a, not i.
✅ Bio je malen, a veseo.
He was small, yet merry. (contrastive a)
❌ Nije mu bio dobro.
Agreement error — this impersonal construction has no masculine subject; the participle is the neuter bilo.
✅ Nije mu bilo dobro.
He was not well off. (impersonal neuter bilo)
Now practice Croatian
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Start learning Croatian→Related Topics
- The Perfect Tense (perfekt)A1 — The everyday past: l-participle + clitic auxiliary biti.
- Coordinating ConjunctionsA1 — i, te, pa, a, ali, nego/već, ili, niti…niti — distinguishing i (and) from a (and-whereas) from ali (but), plus the comma rules and the negation requirement on nego/već.
- Reported (Indirect) SpeechB1 — Turning statements, questions and commands into indirect speech — with the crucial rule that Croatian does NOT backshift tenses.
- The l-Participle (radni glagolski pridjev)A1 — The past active participle that builds the perfect and conditional.
- Literary Excerpt: A Croatian Folk TaleB2 — A line-by-line reading of a traditional Croatian fairy-tale opening, showing how 'Bio jednom' sets the scene, how jedan works as a near-article, and how the aorist and historic present drive folk narration in ways everyday speech avoids.