Breakdown of Grad je lijep, no jako je skup.
grad
city
lijep
beautiful
skup
expensive
no
but, however (formal)
Questions & Answers about Grad je lijep, no jako je skup.
The translation says "but" for no. Could I use ali instead?
Yes, you can! Both no and ali mean "but" and are mostly interchangeable. The word ali is the most common translation for "but," while no is just a slightly more formal or emphatic alternative that you will frequently encounter at this level.
Why is the second "is" placed after jako (jako je skup) instead of before it?
The word je is an enclitic, which means it is a "weak" word that cannot stand at the very beginning of a sentence or a new grammatical clause. Because of this rule, it naturally drops into the second position of its own clause, right after the first word, which here is jako.
Why is there no Croatian word for "it" in the second half of the sentence?
Croatian frequently drops subject pronouns like "it", "he", or "she" when the context is already obvious. The verb je tells us it is a third-person subject, and since we are still talking about grad (the city), "it" is simply understood without needing the actual pronoun on.
Why do the adjectives lijep and skup not have special endings like -a or -o?
Adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. The noun grad is masculine, so both lijep (beautiful) and skup (expensive) take the base masculine singular form, which usually ends in a consonant. If the noun were feminine, like zgrada (building), they would become lijepa and skupa.
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