Word
Oni su uvijek dobri prema životinjama.
Meaning
They are always good towards animals.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Oni su uvijek dobri prema životinjama.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
oni
they
dobar
good
uvijek
always
Questions & Answers about Oni su uvijek dobri prema životinjama.
Why does životinjama end in -ama?
životinjama is the dative plural of the feminine noun životinja (animal). For regular feminine nouns that end in -a, the dative and locative plural ending is always -ama.
Why do we use the dative case for the animals in this sentence?
The preposition prema (towards) strictly requires the dative case. Whenever you express acting a certain way 'towards' someone or something, you will use prema followed by the dative form.
Why is the adjective dobri used instead of dobar?
dobri is the plural form of the adjective. It must agree with the subject Oni (they), which is a masculine or mixed-gender plural pronoun. If the sentence was about a group of only females, it would change to One su uvijek dobre.
Could we put uvijek before su, similar to the English 'They always are'?
No, because su (are) is an enclitic, which is a short, unstressed word. In Croatian, enclitics must naturally fall into the second position in the sentence. Therefore, su has to come directly after the first word, Oni.