Expressing Years
To express the year an event occurred in Croatian, you literally say "of the [Year]th year." This is done by putting the year into the genitive ordinal format, followed by godine (the genitive singular of godina, meaning year).
When reading a long year out loud, only the very last digit becomes an ordinal number. Because godina is feminine, that final ordinal takes the feminine genitive ending -e (for example, pete, prve, or četvrte). The thousands, hundreds, and tens stay as regular cardinal numbers.
Narrating Biographies and History
These expressions are common alongside verbs for life events and historical milestones, such as roditi se (to be born), umrijeti (to die), and osnovati (to found).
Centuries and Eras
When talking about broader time periods like centuries (stoljeće) or eras (doba), use the preposition u (in) followed by the locative case. The ordinal number modifying the century or era will also take the appropriate locative ending.
Year Ranges
To express that an event like a war (rat) lasted from one year to another, use the prepositions od (from) and do (to). Because both prepositions naturally take the genitive case, the structure for the years remains exactly the same: od + [first genitive year] + do + [second genitive year] + godine.