Breakdown of Jučer smo kupili torbu od kože.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
torba
bag
kupiti
to buy (perfective)
jučer
yesterday
od
from
koža
leather
Questions & Answers about Jučer smo kupili torbu od kože.
Why do we use od kože instead of just koža?
To say what material something is made of, Croatian uses the preposition od (of/from) followed by the Genitive case. The dictionary form is koža (leather), and its Genitive form is kože.
Does koža always mean "leather"?
koža means both "skin" (human or animal) and "leather". You can easily tell from the context of a bag that it means "leather" here.
Why does the word for bag end in -u (torbu)?
Because the bag is the direct object being bought, it must be in the Accusative case. For feminine nouns ending in -a like torba, the Accusative ending changes to -u.
How do we know who bought the bag if there is no word for "we"?
The pronoun mi (we) is dropped, which is standard in Croatian. The helper verb smo and the plural ending on kupili (bought) already show that "we" did the action.
Why is smo placed right after Jučer?
smo is an enclitic, which is a special type of "weak" word. A major rule in Croatian is that enclitics must take the second position in the sentence, which here is directly after the first word (Jučer).
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