Breakdown of Tamo je mnogo studenata.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
tamo
there
student
student
mnogo
much, a lot of (+ genitive)
Questions & Answers about Tamo je mnogo studenata.
Why do we use je (is) instead of su (are) when talking about multiple students?
In Croatian, adverbs of quantity like mnogo (many/a lot) always dictate a singular verb. So instead of saying 'there are many', you literally say 'there is a lot of students'.
Why is the word for students studenata in this sentence?
After quantity words like mnogo, nouns must be in the genitive case. Because there are multiple students, we use the genitive plural. For most masculine nouns like student, the genitive plural ending is -a.
If the base word is student, why is the genitive plural studenata and not studenta?
Studenta is already used for the genitive singular (meaning 'of one student'). To make the plural distinct and easier to pronounce, an extra -a- is inserted between the last two consonants (the n and the t). This extra vowel is very common in the genitive plural.
Could we use ima instead of je in this sentence?
Yes, you could also say Tamo ima mnogo studenata. Both je and ima can be used to express 'there is' or 'there are' in a specific location, and both work perfectly with mnogo.
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