Questions & Answers about Tko je vlasnik hotela?
Why does the word for hotel have an "a" at the end, making it "hotela"?
This is the genitive case in action! To show possession or translate the English word "of", masculine nouns ending in a consonant like hotel take the ending -a in the genitive singular. This single ending turns the word into "of the hotel".
Where are the words for "of" and "the" in this sentence?
Croatian does not use articles like "the" or "a". Also, it does not use a separate word for "of" to show possession here. The "of" meaning is built right into the noun by changing its ending. The genitive form hotela does the job of "of the hotel" all by itself.
How do we know which of the two nouns takes the genitive ending?
The word that comes after "of" in English is the one that takes the genitive case in Croatian. We are asking about the owner (the main subject, so vlasnik stays in the basic nominative case) OF the hotel, so hotel is the noun that gets the genitive -a ending.
Does the word order matter for "vlasnik hotela"?
Yes. Just like in English where you say "owner of the hotel", in Croatian the noun in the genitive case usually comes immediately after the noun it describes. So you will normally see it written as vlasnik hotela and not the other way around.