Learn Croatian: Svako selo ima crkvu. - Every village has a church.

The word svaki behaves like an adjective, meaning its ending must match the gender, number, and case of the noun it attaches to. Since selo (village) is a neuter noun in the nominative case (acting as the subject), svaki becomes the neuter form svako.

Does svako always take a singular noun, just like 'every' does in English?

Yes! When you use svaki, svaka, or svako to mean 'every' or 'each', the noun that follows it is always singular. That is why we use the singular selo instead of the plural sela.

If the sentence is talking about all the villages, why is the verb ima (has) in the singular form?

Even though the meaning refers to multiple villages, the grammatical subject svako selo (every village) is singular. Because the subject is singular, the verb must also be the third-person singular form ima, matching how we say 'every village has' in English, rather than 'have'.

Why does the word for church end in -u (crkvu)?

The church is the direct object of the sentence because it is the thing being had. This means it must be in the accusative case. For feminine nouns that end in -a in their base form, like crkva, the ending changes to -u in the accusative case.