Breakdown of Stanodavac s kojim pijem kavu vrlo je ljubazan.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
kava
coffee
piti
to drink
koji
which
s
with
ljubazan
polite
vrlo
very (formal)
stanodavac
landlord
Questions & Answers about Stanodavac s kojim pijem kavu vrlo je ljubazan.
Why is it s kojim instead of just s koji?
The preposition s (with) requires the Instrumental case. Because it refers back to stanodavac (a masculine singular noun), the relative pronoun koji must take the masculine singular Instrumental form, which is kojim.
In English we often put 'with' at the end of the sentence, like 'the landlord I drink coffee with'. Can I put s at the end in Croatian?
No, Croatian doesn't allow 'dangling' prepositions. A preposition must always come immediately before the noun or pronoun it connects to. You have to phrase it literally as 'with whom' (s kojim), exactly as it appears here.
Why is the verb je all the way over there, after vrlo?
The main sentence is Stanodavac... vrlo je ljubazan, but it gets interrupted by the relative clause (s kojim pijem kavu). When the main sentence resumes, the enclitic verb je (which always wants to be in the second position) takes the second slot of that remaining phrase, placing it right after vrlo.
Why do we use s here instead of sa?
The longer form sa is only required when the following word starts with certain consonants that would make it hard to pronounce (like s, z, š, or ž). Because kojim starts with 'k', the short form s is easy to say and is the standard choice here.
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