Breakdown of Moj sok od jabuke je uvijek bistar, a tvoj je često mutan.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
a
and / but
tvoj
your (informal)
često
often
Questions & Answers about Moj sok od jabuke je uvijek bistar, a tvoj je često mutan.
I see the adjective bistar here. What happens to the 'a' if I use it with a feminine noun like voda (water)?
Bistar contains a "fleeting a" (nepostojano a). When you add an ending for a feminine, neuter, or plural noun, that a disappears. So, to say "clear water", you would drop the a and add the feminine ending -a, resulting in bistra voda (not bistara voda).
Does mutan also have a fleeting 'a'?
Yes! Just like bistar, the a before the final consonant in mutan drops out when you add declension endings. If you were talking about a cloudy soup (juha), you would say mutna juha. For a neuter noun like beer (pivo), it would be mutno pivo.
Why does the sentence use "sok od jabuke" instead of an adjective like "jabučni sok"?
While jabučni sok is grammatically correct, it sounds a bit formal or like a label on a bottle. In everyday conversational Croatian, it is much more natural to use sok od (juice of) followed by the fruit in the genitive case. You'll hear this pattern for all juices, like sok od naranče (orange juice).
The English translation says "and", so why is the Croatian word "a" instead of "i"?