Breakdown of Nakon što su dodali efekte, film je bio puno bolji.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
film
movie
puno
a lot
bolji
better
nakon
after (+ genitive)
dodati
to add
što
that (subordinating conjunction)
efekt
effect
Questions & Answers about Nakon što su dodali efekte, film je bio puno bolji.
In English, we often use the past perfect ('had added') in this type of sentence. Why does Croatian just use the regular past tense (su dodali)?
When you use nakon što (after) to describe a sequence of events in the past, Croatian generally uses the regular past tense (the perfect) in both clauses. Because nakon što already makes it perfectly clear which action happened first, a more complex tense isn't needed.
Why do we use the perfective verb dodati (dodali) here instead of its imperfective partner?
The conjunction nakon što strongly implies that an action was completely finished before the next action began. Because the effects were completely added before the movie became better, we need the perfective aspect to highlight that the action was completed.
Why is the helping verb su placed right after nakon što?
The phrase nakon što acts as a single conjunction introducing a new clause. Enclitics (like the helping verb su) always want to be in the second position of their clause. They treat nakon što as the first block of information, so su naturally tucks in right behind it.
How does the phrase puno bolji work grammatically here?
Bolji is the comparative form of dobar (good), meaning 'better'. Since it describes film, which is a masculine noun in the nominative (subject) case, bolji takes the masculine nominative form. We simply place puno (a lot / much) right before it to say 'much better'.
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