Questions & Answers about Cijena novih automobila je visoka.
Why do we use novih here instead of the dictionary form novi?
Novih is in the genitive plural case. In Croatian, adjectives must match the noun they describe. Since automobila is in the genitive plural, the adjective novi (new) takes the genitive plural ending -ih to become novih.
Why is the phrase for 'new cars' in the genitive case to begin with?
The genitive case is often used to show possession or a relationship between two nouns, just like the word 'of' in English. Here, putting the phrase into the genitive gives us novih automobila, which translates directly to 'of new cars'.
The word automobila ends in -a. How do we know it is plural and not singular?
For masculine nouns like automobil, the ending -a is used for both the genitive singular and the genitive plural. You can tell it means multiple cars here because of the adjective! If it were singular, the phrase would be novog automobila. Because it uses the plural adjective to make novih automobila, we know the noun is plural too.
Why is the word for 'high' written as visoka instead of matching the cars?
The adjective visoka describes the word cijena (price), not the cars. Since cijena is a feminine noun in the nominative case (it is the main subject of the sentence), the adjective takes the matching feminine singular ending -a.