Questions & Answers about Moj sin je treći u školi.
Why does the word for "third" take the form treći here?
In Croatian, ordinal numbers (like first, second, third) act like adjectives. They must match the gender, number, and case of the noun they describe. Because sin (son) is masculine, singular, and in the nominative case (as the subject of the sentence), we use the masculine singular nominative form treći.
Does treći have a normal masculine ordinal ending?
Not quite. Most masculine ordinal numbers end in -i (like prvi for first, or peti for fifth). However, the word for "third" is slightly irregular because the masculine form ends in -ći. For reference, the feminine form is treća and the neuter is treće.
Why is the word for school školi instead of its dictionary form škola?
We are using the preposition u (in) to describe a static location, which means the noun that follows must be in the locative case. For feminine nouns that end in -a in their dictionary form, like škola, the locative case changes the -a to an -i.
In English we say "the third" and "the school". Why are there no words for "the" here?
Croatian does not have definite or indefinite articles (the words "a", "an", or "the"). You just use the noun or adjective on its own, and the context tells you if it means "a" or "the".