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Njezino oko je smeđe.

Njezino oko je smeđe.
Her eye is brown.
From Lesson 28:The body: Boli me glava·Croatian

Breakdown of Njezino oko je smeđe.

biti
to be (sam, si, je)
smeđ
brown
njezin
her
oko
eye

Questions & Answers about Njezino oko je smeđe.

Why is the word for "her" written as njezino here?
In Croatian, possessive words like "her" have to match the gender of the thing being owned, not the owner! Since the word for eye (oko) is a neuter noun, we must use the neuter form njezino instead of the masculine (njezin) or feminine (njezina).
How do I know what gender oko is?
You can usually tell a Croatian noun's gender by its last letter. Because oko ends in "-o", it is a neuter noun. That is why both the possessive (njezino) and the adjective (smeđe) are in their neuter forms to match it.
If oko is neuter and ends in "-o", why does the neuter adjective smeđe (brown) end in "-e"?
That is a great catch! Usually, neuter adjectives do end in "-o". However, there is a spelling rule in Croatian: if the base of the adjective ends in a "soft" consonant sound—like đ, č, ć, š, or ž—the neuter ending changes from "-o" to "-e". Because the base word for brown is smeđ, the neuter form becomes smeđe.
Why is je (is) placed after Njezino oko? Can I start the sentence with it?
The word je is an enclitic, which is a short, unstressed word that strongly prefers to be in the second grammatical position of a sentence. In this case, it comes right after the first complete concept, which is the phrase Njezino oko (Her eye). You cannot start a basic statement with je.

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