This four-word proverb is a near-perfect A2 specimen: short enough to memorise in one breath, yet it shows three core Croatian structures at once. In Tko pita ne skita you meet the headless relative tko ('whoever / he who'), the gnomic present for a timeless truth, and the simplest possible verb negation, ne + verb (ne skita 'does not wander'). And it all balances on a single rhyme — pita / skita — with no verb 'to be' anywhere. Read this confidently and the whole tko-proverb family opens up.
The proverb
Tko pita ne skita.
Whoever asks doesn't wander (lost); (asking the way keeps you on track / better to ask than get lost).
Word by word
| Word | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| tko | whoever / he who | relative pronoun heading a headless subject clause; also tko? = 'who?' |
| pita | asks | 3rd-sg present of pitati 'to ask'; gnomic present |
| ne | not | the negation particle; sits directly before the verb |
| skita | wanders / roams (lost) | 3rd-sg present of skitati (se) 'to wander about'; rhymes with pita |
The literal order is "Whoever asks not wanders" — that is, "Whoever asks does not wander off / does not get lost." The first half Tko pita is the subject clause ('the person who asks'); the second half ne skita is what that person does (or rather, does not do). Two short clauses, four words, and the verbs pita and skita chime at the ends.
What it means and when to say it
The figurative meaning is asking keeps you out of trouble: a person willing to ask questions — for directions, for help, for clarification — does not end up lost, confused, or going in circles. It gently encourages you to speak up rather than blunder around silently. Underneath the literal image of not getting physically lost is the broader lesson: there is no shame in asking.
Use it to reassure someone hesitant to ask, to defend your own questions, or to nudge a proud person to seek directions. It is warm, everyday, and very common, fine in any register. There is no single fixed English proverb that matches it; the closest ideas are better to ask than get lost and there's no shame in asking (and, loosely, ask and you shall find your way).
Samo ti pitaj prodavača gdje je kolodvor — tko pita ne skita.
Just go ahead and ask the shop assistant where the station is — better to ask than get lost.
Ne srami se pitati profesoricu; znaš kako kažu, tko pita ne skita.
Don't be shy about asking the teacher; you know how they say, there's no shame in asking.
Izgubili smo se jer nismo nikoga pitali, a tko pita ne skita.
We got lost because we didn't ask anyone, and whoever asks doesn't wander lost.
Grammar focus 1: the headless relative tko + gnomic present
The proverb opens with the same tko you use to ask 'who?', but here it is a relative pronoun meaning 'whoever / he who', heading a headless (free) relative clause that is the subject of the sentence. Tko pita by itself names a person — 'the one who asks' — with no separate noun for it to attach to. This is the standard Croatian way to state a rule about whoever does X, and it often pairs with a dropped correlative taj ('that one'): Tko pita, [taj] ne skita.
The two verbs — pita ('asks') and skita ('wanders') — are both in the gnomic present: the plain present used for a timeless, general truth, not for anything happening right now. Croatian, like English, just uses the everyday present for maxims ("the early bird catches the worm"). What signals the gnomic reading is the generic subject tko and the absence of any time word. Both verbs are imperfective, fitting a habitual, repeating truth.
Tko pita, taj brzo nauči.
Whoever asks learns quickly. (the tko … taj … frame, with the explicit correlative)
Tko radi, ne boji se gladi.
Whoever works does not fear hunger. (another tko-proverb in the gnomic present)
Grammar focus 2: simple verb negation — ne + verb
The negation is as clean as Croatian gets: the particle ne sits directly before the verb, with a space, and that is the whole rule for negating an ordinary verb. Ne skita = 'does not wander'. There is no auxiliary 'do', no contraction, and ne is written as a separate word from the verb (so ne skita, two words — not neskita).
Two things are worth flagging for an English speaker. First, Croatian has no 'do'-support: you negate the lexical verb itself (ne skita), never an added helper. Second, ne is the verb-negator, distinct from the noun/adjective negator and from the ni- words used in double negation. A small but important exception lives nearby: the verb 'to be', biti, fuses with ne in the present (ne + je → nije 'is not', ne + su → nisu 'are not'), and the verb 'to want', htjeti, gives neću, nećeš …; but with a normal verb like skitati you simply write ne + the form.
Ne znam kako se zove ta ulica.
I don't know what that street is called. (ne + verb, no 'do'-support)
On ne pita za put i zato se uvijek izgubi.
He doesn't ask for directions and that's why he always gets lost. (ne pita = simple verb negation)
Grammar focus 3: the four-word rhyming balance (no copula)
The whole rule fits in four words with no verb 'to be' and no conjunction joining the clauses — they simply sit side by side: Tko pita / ne skita. Each half is anchored on a present-tense verb, and the verbs land at the clause boundaries so they can rhyme: pita / skita. This clause-final verb placement is freer in Croatian than in English and is exactly what makes the rhyme possible.
The rhyme is the saying's memory hook. A learner should read the structure as a cause-and-effect / condition-and-result pair — 'if you ask → you don't get lost' — held together by sound, not by an explicit if or then. Notice too that the second clause has no repeated subject: Tko pita sets the subject once, and ne skita simply continues with it. This radical economy (no copula, no conjunction, no repeated subject) is the signature of the Croatian proverb.
Tko ne pita, taj se izgubi i okolo skita.
Whoever doesn't ask gets lost and wanders around. (the proverb turned around, breaking the four-word form for effect)
Strpljen — spašen.
Patient — saved. (another ultra-compact, verbless maxim: 'patience is rewarded')
How this differs from English
Three contrasts stand out. First, one word for 'whoever': English needs who + -ever or a phrase like the one who; Croatian does it with the single relative tko, which also serves as 'who?'. Second, negation without 'do': English inserts a helper — 'does not wander' — whereas Croatian negates the verb directly, ne skita, with just the particle ne. Third, verb-final rhyme: English locks its word order, so its nearest equivalents don't rhyme; Croatian moves the verb to the clause end to chime pita with skita, packing a complete life lesson into four words and no verb 'to be'.
Common Mistakes
❌ Tko pita neskita.
Wrong spelling — ne is a separate word before the verb: ne skita, not neskita.
✅ Tko pita ne skita.
Whoever asks doesn't wander lost.
❌ Tko pita ne skitaju.
Wrong verb form — the subject is the singular 'whoever', so it's 3rd-sg ne skita, not the plural ne skitaju.
✅ Tko pita ne skita.
Whoever asks doesn't wander lost.
❌ Tko pita ne skitao.
Wrong — a timeless rule takes the gnomic present skita, not the past participle/L-form skitao ('wandered').
✅ Tko pita ne skita.
Better to ask than get lost.
❌ Ko pita ne skita.
Non-Croatian spelling — standard Croatian writes tko (with t); ko is the Serbian/Bosnian variant.
✅ Tko pita ne skita.
Whoever asks doesn't wander lost.
Key Takeaways
- tko = the headless relative 'whoever / he who'; the frame is tko + present, [taj +] present. Spell it tko, not ko.
- Both verbs are gnomic present (pita, skita) — the plain, imperfective present for timeless truths.
- Verb negation is simply ne + verb as two words (ne skita) — no 'do'-support, no contraction (but note biti → nije, htjeti → neću).
- The proverb is verbless of 'to be', four words, balanced by the rhyme pita / skita; verb-final placement makes the chime possible.
- Meaning: asking keeps you out of trouble — better to ask than get lost; there's no shame in asking.
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Start learning Croatian→Related Topics
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- Negating VerbsA1 — ne, the fused negatives nisam/neću/nemam, and placement.
- Using the Present TenseA2 — Habitual, ongoing, future, and historic present — and aspect's role.
- Basic Negation with neA1 — How to negate a Croatian sentence — ne before the verb, the fused negatives nisam, neću and nemam, and where negation lands in compound tenses.
- Proverb: Tko rano rani, dvije sreće grabiB1 — The proverb Tko rano rani, dvije sreće grabi ('the early bird catches the worm') annotated as a B1 anchor for four structures: the relative/conditional tko ('whoever') heading a headless clause, the gnomic present for timeless truths, the feminine numeral dvije with the paucal/genitive-singular noun sreće, and the verbless balance of two rhyming clauses.