Breakdown of Zmajevi su letjeli iznad planine.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
letjeti
to fly
planina
mountain
iznad
above
Questions & Answers about Zmajevi su letjeli iznad planine.
Why is the plural of zmaj formed as zmajevi instead of zmajovi?
The word for dragon is zmaj. Because it is a one-syllable masculine noun, it gets an extra syllable in the plural. Usually this is -ov-, but because zmaj ends in j (which is considered a soft consonant in Croatian), we use the infix -ev- instead, making it zmajevi.
Why does the sentence use planine instead of the dictionary form planina?
The preposition iznad (above) always requires the noun that follows it to take the genitive case. For feminine nouns ending in -a like planina, the genitive singular ending is -e, which gives us planine.
Why does the verb letjeli end in -i?
Why does su come right after Zmajevi?
The auxiliary verb su is an enclitic, which is a short, unstressed word. Croatian grammar rules strictly require enclitics to be placed in the second position of the sentence, immediately following the first word.