Breakdown of Ovdje nema mnogo žena.
ovdje
here
žena
woman
nema
there is no
mnogo
much, a lot of (+ genitive)
Questions & Answers about Ovdje nema mnogo žena.
Why is the word for "women" žena? Isn't žena the singular word for "woman"?
Yes, it is! However, the genitive plural ending for almost all regular nouns in Croatian is -a. Because of this rule, the genitive plural form of žena happens to be spelled exactly the same as the basic singular form (žena). In spoken Croatian, the final "a" is stretched out longer in the plural to help tell them apart, but in writing, you just have to look at the context clues (like the word mnogo).
Why do we need to use the genitive case for žena in this sentence?
There are actually two words triggering the genitive case here! First, quantity words like mnogo (many / a lot of) always require the noun that follows them to be in the genitive case. Second, the word nema (there is not / there are not) also forces the noun into the genitive.
The English translation says "There are not", but doesn't nema come from a singular verb?
Yes, nema literally comes from the "he/she/it" form of the verb nemati (to not have). But when it is used to point out that something is missing, it acts as a fixed, "impersonal" word. It means both "there is not" and "there are not". It never changes to a plural form, even when you are talking about multiple things like "many women".
How would I change this sentence to say "There are many women here"?
You would replace nema with its positive counterpart, ima (there is / there are). The sentence would become: Ovdje ima mnogo žena. Just like nema, the word ima never changes for plural nouns and it also requires the following noun to be in the genitive case.
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