Breakdown of Broj mobitela je na papiru.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
mobitel
cellphone
na
on, at / to, onto (with motion) / about (thinking about)
papir
paper
Questions & Answers about Broj mobitela je na papiru.
Why is the word for cellphone mobitela here instead of mobitel?
This is the genitive case in action! To say 'cellphone number', Croatian expresses it as 'number of a cellphone' (broj mobitela). Because mobitel is a masculine noun ending in a consonant, it takes the ending -a in the genitive singular.
Can I swap the order and say mobitela broj like we say 'cellphone number' in English?
No, in Croatian, the genitive noun almost always comes after the noun it describes. You must say 'number of a cellphone' (broj mobitela), not the other way around.
Why does the word papir change to papiru at the end of the sentence?
The preposition na (on) is used here to show a static location, which means the noun following it must be in the locative case. For masculine nouns like papir, you add -u to get the locative form (papiru).
There is no word for 'The' at the start of the sentence. How do we know it means 'The number'?
Croatian doesn't use articles like 'the', 'a', or 'an'. You just use the noun broj, and the listener understands whether it means 'a number' or 'the number' based on the context of the conversation.