Word
Svi su šutjeli tijekom njegova govora.
Meaning
Everyone was silent during his speech.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Svi su šutjeli tijekom njegova govora.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
šutjeti
to be silent
sav
all (of a whole) / everyone, all (people) / everything
njegov
his
Questions & Answers about Svi su šutjeli tijekom njegova govora.
How does the preposition tijekom affect the ending of njegov govor?
The preposition tijekom (during) always requires the genitive case. Because of this, the nominative phrase njegov govor (his speech) changes to the genitive njegova govora.
Why is the word for "his" written as njegova here instead of njegovog?
For masculine and neuter adjectives in the genitive case, the most common endings you learn first are -og or -oga (like njegovog). However, -a is a shorter, slightly more traditional genitive ending that is still widely used, especially in writing. Both njegova govora and njegovog govora are correct.
Why do we use the plural verbs su šutjeli when the English translation uses the singular "everyone was"?
In English, "everyone" is a singular pronoun. However, the Croatian equivalent svi literally translates to "all" and is always grammatically plural. Therefore, it requires the plural auxiliary su and the plural participle šutjeli.
Why is the imperfective verb šutjeti used here?
šutjeti means "to be silent" or "to keep quiet" as an ongoing state. We use the imperfective aspect here because the sentence describes a continuous action that was happening throughout the entire duration of the speech, rather than a single completed event.