Log inSign up

Spavao sam tijekom dugog govora.

Spavao sam tijekom dugog govora.
I slept during the long speech.
From Lesson 190:During an event (tijekom)·Croatian

Questions & Answers about Spavao sam tijekom dugog govora.

Why do we say dugog govora instead of dug govor?
The preposition tijekom (during) always requires the Genitive case. To match this, the masculine noun govor (speech) adds an -a to become govora, and the adjective dug (long) takes the masculine genitive ending -og to become dugog.
Could I write dugoga instead of dugog here?
Yes! Adjectives in the masculine and neuter Genitive often have an optional -a at the end. Both dugog and dugoga are perfectly correct and mean the exact same thing, though dugog is a bit more common in everyday speech.
Why use the imperfective verb spavao (was sleeping) instead of a perfective verb?
Spavati (to sleep) is an imperfective verb, which describes an ongoing state or process. Using it with tijekom shows that your sleeping was an ongoing background action that happened at the same time as the speech. If you wanted to say a completed action like "I fell asleep during the speech," you would use the perfective verb zaspao.
How do we know the speaker of this sentence is male?
In the past tense, the main verb changes its ending based on the gender of the subject. The -o ending in spavao tells us the speaker is masculine. If a female were speaking, she would change it to the feminine ending and say Spavala sam.

Learn Spavao sam tijekom dugog govora and more in Croatian

All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.

  • ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
  • ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
  • ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free
Start learning Croatian →