Months of the year

The Months of the Year

Croatian months have unique Slavic names that describe nature and the changing seasons, making them quite different from the Latin-based names used in English.

Just like the days of the week, the names of the months are not capitalized in Croatian unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence.

Saying "In a Month" (u + Locative)

To talk about plans or weather happening in a specific month, use the preposition u followed by the month in the locative case. Because Croatian months belong to different grammatical categories, their endings change in a few different ways:

• Masculine months: Most months are masculine and take the ending -u in the locative. If the month's base form ends in a syllable with a "fleeting a" (like -anj, -ak, or -ac), that -a- disappears when you add the ending. For example, siječanj becomes u siječnju, and prosinac becomes u prosincu.
• Feminine months: veljača (February) is feminine. Its final -a changes to an -i, making it u veljači.
• Adjectival months: studeni (November) is an adjective acting as a noun. It takes the standard adjective ending -om, becoming u studenom.

Before and After (prije / poslije + Genitive)

When you want to say that something happens before (prije) or after (poslije) a certain month, you must use the genitive case.

• For most masculine months, the genitive ending is -a. The "fleeting a" rule still applies here, meaning that ožujak becomes ožujka, and lipanj becomes lipnja.
• For the feminine month veljača, the genitive ending changes the final -a to an -e, becoming veljače.