Breakdown of Iako je stara, to je tipkovnica kojom pišem knjigu.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
to
that
knjiga
book
star
old
pisati
to write / to say, be stated (in a text)
koji
which
iako
although
tipkovnica
keyboard
Questions & Answers about Iako je stara, to je tipkovnica kojom pišem knjigu.
Why is it kojom and not s kojom? The English translation says "with which".
Kojom is the Instrumental case of the relative pronoun koji. We use the Instrumental because the keyboard is the tool or instrument you use to write. In Croatian, when you use an object as a tool to do something, you use the bare Instrumental case without the preposition s or sa. You only use s/sa for company, like doing something together with someone.
How do we know to use the specific form kojom?
The relative pronoun koji always matches the noun it replaces in gender and number, but its case depends on its job in the new clause. Here, it refers to tipkovnica (keyboard), which is feminine and singular. Because it acts as an instrument in the new clause, it takes the Instrumental case. The feminine singular Instrumental form of koji is kojom.
Why does the sentence start with Iako je stara (feminine) if we are talking about an "it"?
In Croatian, all nouns have a grammatical gender, and adjectives must match them. Tipkovnica is a feminine noun because it ends in -a. Therefore, the adjective for "old" must be in the feminine singular form, stara, even though English uses the gender-neutral "it".
Since tipkovnica is feminine, why do we use the neuter pronoun to in to je tipkovnica?
When you are introducing a noun or pointing it out by saying "that is" or "this is", Croatian uses the fixed neuter pronoun to, regardless of the gender of the noun that follows. You would only use the feminine ta if you were putting it directly in front of the noun as an adjective, like in ta tipkovnica je stara (that keyboard is old).
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