Word
Jesu li uživali na koncertu?
Meaning
Did they enjoy the concert?
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Jesu li uživali na koncertu?
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
li
question particle
na
on, at / to, onto (with motion) / about (thinking about)
koncert
concert (m)
Questions & Answers about Jesu li uživali na koncertu?
Why does this sentence start with Jesu li?
To ask a yes/no question in the past tense, we start with the long form of the "to be" helper verb, followed by the question word li. Jesu is the long form for "they are". Together with the main verb uživali, it forms the past tense question "Did they enjoy?".
Why does the word for "enjoyed" end in -li (uživali)?
In the Croatian past tense, the main action word changes to match the gender and number of the people doing it. The -li ending is used for a plural group of males, or a mixed group of males and females. If it were a group of only females, it would be uživale.
Where is the word for "they" in this sentence?
Croatian usually drops subject words like oni (they). The helper verb Jesu and the plural ending on uživali already make it perfectly clear that we are talking about "they". Including oni is only done for strong emphasis.
Why is it na koncertu instead of just na koncert?
When the preposition na (meaning "at" or "on") is used to describe where an event is taking place, the noun changes its ending. For most masculine words like koncert, we add a -u to the end.