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Kasnimo jer je bila nesreća u prometu.

Kasnimo jer je bila nesreća u prometu.
We are late because there was an accident in the traffic.
From Lesson 120:Causal clauses (jer, zato što)·Croatian

Questions & Answers about Kasnimo jer je bila nesreća u prometu.

Could we use zato što instead of jer in this sentence?
Yes, you can use either! Both mean because and work exactly the same way in the middle of a sentence. Just remember that if you ever want to start a sentence with Because..., you must use zato što, since jer is never allowed to be the very first word.
Why does the little word je come immediately after jer?
The word jer acts as a boundary that starts a brand new clause. Because je is an enclitic (a weak word that cannot stand on its own), it rushes to take the second position in its own clause, which happens to be right after jer.
Why does the past tense use the feminine form bila instead of bio?
In Croatian, the past tense verb always has to match the gender of the subject. The subject of the second part of the sentence is nesreća (accident). Since nesreća ends in -a, it is a feminine noun, so we use the feminine verb form bila.
Why is the ending -u added to the word promet?
It is in the locative case. We use the preposition u with the locative case to describe a location where something happens or exists. The masculine noun promet (traffic) takes the standard locative ending -u.

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