Breakdown of Tko će mi reći istinu?
tko
who
ću
will (ću, ćeš, će, ćemo, ćete, će)
reći
to tell
istina
truth
mi
to me
Questions & Answers about Tko će mi reći istinu?
Why do we use reći here instead of govoriti?
Reći (to tell/say) is the perfective partner of the verb govoriti (to speak/talk). Because the speaker wants someone to tell them the truth in a specific, completed instance, we use the perfective reći. If they were asking 'Who will continuously speak the truth to me?', they would use the imperfective govoriti.
Why is the word order će mi and not mi će?
Both će (will) and mi (to me) are clitics, which are short words that naturally group together in the second position of a sentence. When you have multiple clitics, verbal clitics like će always come before pronoun clitics like mi.
Why is the word for truth spelled istinu instead of istina?
Istina is a feminine noun. Here, it is the direct object of the verb (the thing being told), so it must take the accusative case. For feminine nouns ending in -a, the accusative ending is -u, making it istinu.
Why is the dative mi used here?
The verb reći (to tell) requires an indirect object to indicate the person being spoken to. In Croatian, this indirect object takes the dative case. Mi is the short dative form of ja (I), meaning 'to me'.
Why is the verb će in the third-person singular form?
Question words like Tko (who) are treated grammatically as singular third-person subjects, just like 'he' or 'she'. Therefore, the future tense helper verb must be the third-person singular će.
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