A vowel appears
You know the genitive plural ends in -a (pet knjiga, puno studenata). When a noun's stem ends in a group of two consonants, Croatian inserts an extra a BETWEEN those consonants in the genitive plural. This is the same "fleeting a" you saw appearing and disappearing in words like momak — here it appears where it helps pronunciation.
The pattern
| nominative singular | genitive plural |
|---|---|
| sestra (sister) | pet sestara |
| zemlja (country) | puno zemalja |
| pismo (letter) | malo pisama |
Without the inserted a, forms like "sestra" would give an unpronounceable "sestr". The extra a breaks up the cluster: sestara, zemalja, pisama.
In use
| I have five sisters. | Imam pet sestara. |
| How many countries do you know? | Koliko zemalja znaš? |
Nouns whose stem ends in a single consonant do not need it: pet knjiga, deset godina.
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