Breakdown of Sljedeći gost traži starog prijatelja.
prijatelj
friend
star
old
tražiti
to look for / to demand, request
gost
guest
Questions & Answers about Sljedeći gost traži starog prijatelja.
Why is it starog prijatelja and not just stari prijatelj?
The verb traži (is looking for) requires an object in the accusative case. Because prijatelj (friend) is a masculine noun that represents a living person (it is animate), both the noun and the adjective describing it must change. Prijatelj gets an -a at the end, and the adjective stari (old) changes to starog.
Wait, gost (guest) is also a living person. Why doesn't sljedeći gost change its endings too?
Sljedeći gost is the subject of the sentence (the person who is doing the looking), so it stays in the nominative or "dictionary" case. The special animate endings only apply when the masculine person is the object of the action (in the accusative case), like prijatelja.
Why does stari become starog specifically?
For masculine animate objects in the accusative case, adjectives take the ending -og (or sometimes -eg, depending on the last consonant of the root). Here, the base adjective drops its regular ending and adds -og to become starog, matching the animate noun prijatelja.
In English we say "looking for", but there is no word for "for" in this sentence. Why?