Moving Details to the Front
Croatian normally follows a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order. However, because noun cases tell us who is doing what to whom, the sentence order is actually quite flexible. When telling a dramatic story, you can use this flexibility to emphasize the most important detail by moving it to the very beginning of the sentence.
You can highlight a prepositional phrase by placing it first. Notice that enclitics (unstressed words like the short verb su and the pronoun ga) must remain in the "second position" of the sentence, immediately following the fronted phrase.
| For money, they betrayed him. | Zbog novca su ga izdali. |
Fronting the Direct Object
To emphasize what or who receives the action, you can move the direct object to the front of the sentence. The subject, if stated, often shifts to the end.
| Such a cruel betrayal, I never expected. | Takvu okrutnu izdaju nikada nisam očekivao. |
| This betrayal, that hypocrite planned. | Ovu izdaju je planirao taj licemjer. |
Emphasizing Other Arguments
You can apply this same inversion to any noun case or time phrase. Putting an instrumental noun or a time marker at the beginning highlights how or when a dramatic event occurred.
| With that slap, she humiliated him out of malice. | Tim šamarom ga je ponizila iz zlobe. |
| After the slap, he finally spoke up. | Nakon šamara je konačno progovorio. |
Finally, if you want to front a pronoun to emphasize exactly who was affected, you must use its full, stressed form rather than its short enclitic form.
| Us, that hypocrite betrayed long ago. | Nas je taj licemjer davno izdao. |
