Breakdown of Nije čuo poziv jer je spavao.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
nisam
am not (nisi, nije, nismo, niste, nisu)
jer
because
spavati
to sleep
čuti
to hear
poziv
call
Questions & Answers about Nije čuo poziv jer je spavao.
Wait, we just learned that je means "her". Does it mean "her" in this sentence?
No, this is a very common trap! The word je does double duty in Croatian. It can be the accusative pronoun for "her", but it is also the 3rd-person singular helper verb "to be" (is/has) used to form the past tense. Here, je spavao means "he was sleeping" (literally "is slept"). You can tell it's the helper verb because it's paired directly with the past tense action word (spavao).
Why is it nije čuo instead of "ne je čuo"?
Poziv (the call) is the object being heard. Why doesn't its ending change for the accusative case?
Poziv is a masculine noun. In Croatian, masculine nouns that represent non-living things (like a call, a table, or a window) don't change their endings in the accusative case. They look exactly the same as they do in their base dictionary form. If he had heard a living person or animal, the ending would have changed!
How do we know the sentence is about a "he" if the word on (he) isn't there?
Croatian usually drops subject pronouns like on because the other words give it away. We know it's a "he" because the past tense action words čuo (heard) and spavao (slept) end in -o, which is the masculine ending. If a woman had missed the call, the sentence would be: nije čula poziv jer je spavala.
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