Questions & Answers about Uvijek me boli glava.
Why does me come right after Uvijek?
Uvijek means 'always' and is an adverb of frequency. In Croatian, short pronoun words like me (which means 'me') are called enclitics. They are unstressed words that must sit in the second position of a sentence. Since Uvijek is in the first position, me has to attach right after it.
The English translation is 'My head always hurts', but I do not see a word for 'my'. How does that work?
In Croatian, you usually do not use possessive words like moja ('my') for body parts if it is already clear who they belong to. Instead, the sentence structure literally translates to 'Always the head hurts me'. The pronoun me does the job of telling us whose head is hurting!
Why is glava at the end of the sentence? Is it the object?
No, glava (head) is actually the subject of the sentence, which is why it is in the nominative case (its dictionary form). Croatian word order is very flexible. Putting glava at the end sounds natural here, but you could also say Uvijek me glava boli, which means the exact same thing.
Could I put uvijek somewhere else in the sentence?
Yes! Word order is flexible, but remember that the enclitic me must always stay in the second position. For example, you could say Glava me uvijek boli. This places uvijek later in the sentence and slightly shifts the focus onto 'the head', but the core meaning remains exactly the same.
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