Breakdown of Stvarno nisam mogao odgovoriti.
nisam
am not (nisi, nije, nismo, niste, nisu)
moći
can
odgovoriti
to reply
stvarno
really
Questions & Answers about Stvarno nisam mogao odgovoriti.
How would a woman say this sentence?
A woman would say Stvarno nisam mogla odgovoriti. In the Croatian past tense, the action word changes based on the speaker's gender. Mogao is the masculine form, and mogla is the feminine form.
I know nisam means 'I am not'. Why is it used here for a past tense sentence?
The Croatian past tense is built by combining the present tense of the verb 'to be' with a past action word (participle). So, nisam (I am not) + mogao (been able) is the standard way to express 'I was not able' or 'I couldn't'.
Why is odgovoriti in its dictionary form (infinitive)?
Because it follows mogao, which is a form of moći (to be able to). Just like in English where you say 'I couldn't reply' rather than 'I couldn't replied', the second verb in Croatian stays in the infinitive.
The current lesson is about clitics. Are there any clitics in this sentence?
No, there are no clitics here! Unlike the positive auxiliary word sam (which is a clitic and must take the second position in a sentence), the negative nisam is a full, stressed word. This sentence also doesn't contain any object pronouns like me or te.