Breakdown of On je odan svojoj obitelji i prijateljima.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
on
he
i
and (additive)
prijatelj
friend
Questions & Answers about On je odan svojoj obitelji i prijateljima.
Why is svojoj used here instead of njegovoj for 'his'?
Svoj is the reflexive possessive pronoun, used when the object belongs to the subject of the sentence. Since he is loyal to his own family, we use svojoj. If you used njegovoj, it would mean he was loyal to another man's family.
Why are svojoj obitelji and prijateljima in the dative case?
In Croatian, just like certain verbs, specific adjectives require the dative case to show the target or direction of a feeling. The adjective odan (loyal or devoted) always forces the people or things you are loyal to into the dative case.
Obitelj is a feminine noun, but it doesn't end in -a. How does its dative case work?
Obitelj belongs to a special group of feminine nouns that end in a consonant in their dictionary form (often called i-declension nouns). For these words, the dative singular is formed by simply adding -i, making it obitelji.
Why isn't there another pronoun like svojim right before prijateljima?
When a possessive pronoun applies to a list of nouns, you generally only need to place it before the first one. Even though prijateljima is plural and would normally take svojim, the possessive meaning from svojoj automatically carries over to the rest of the list.