Breakdown of Slavimo rođendan jedanaestog siječnja.
slaviti
to celebrate
rođendan
birthday
siječanj
January
jedanaesti
eleventh
Questions & Answers about Slavimo rođendan jedanaestog siječnja.
Why are both the number and the month in the genitive case here?
In Croatian, to express that something happens on a certain date, you put the entire date phrase into the genitive case. You do not need a preposition like the English word on. The genitive endings on jedanaestog and siječnja automatically carry that meaning.
How do you form jedanaestog from the base number eleven?
The standard number eleven is jedanaest. To make it an ordinal number like eleventh, you treat it like an adjective and add -i, making it jedanaesti. Because this sentence requires the genitive case for dates, that masculine adjective ending changes from -i to -og, giving you jedanaestog.
The dictionary word for January is siječanj. Where did the letter 'a' go in siječnja?
The word siječanj contains what is known as a fleeting 'a'. This means the a in the final syllable of the base word disappears when you add a grammatical ending. When we add the genitive ending -a to express 'of January', the middle a drops out to make pronunciation easier, resulting in siječnja.
Since rođendan is the direct object being celebrated, why didn't its ending change?
It actually is in the accusative case! The word rođendan (birthday) is a masculine noun. In Croatian, masculine nouns that represent non-living things (inanimate objects) have an accusative form that looks completely identical to their basic nominative dictionary form.
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