Breakdown of Predak je šetao s materom i kćerju.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
i
and (additive)
šetati
to walk
kći
daughter
s
with
mati
mother
predak
ancestor
Questions & Answers about Predak je šetao s materom i kćerju.
Why is the word for mother materom instead of majkom?
This sentence uses the highly irregular, older noun mati (mother) instead of the standard, everyday word majka. Because it comes after the preposition s (with), it must be in the instrumental case. For mati, you form cases by first expanding the root to mater- and then adding the ending. The instrumental ending here is -om, giving us materom.
The nominative is kći, so how does it become kćerju in this sentence?
Just like mati, the feminine noun kći (daughter) is highly irregular and expands its root to kćer- in all cases except the nominative. Since it is also linked to the preposition s (with), it takes the instrumental case. The instrumental of kći uses the unique ending -ju, resulting in kćerju.
Why use s instead of sa before materom?
The preposition s only changes to sa when the next word starts with a sibilant consonant (like s, š, z, ž) or a difficult consonant cluster where it would be hard to pronounce. Since materom starts with an m, it is easy to say s materom, so the short form is used.
Since there are three people involved (ancestor, mother, daughter), why is the verb je šetao singular?
The verb only agrees with the grammatical subject of the sentence, which is predak (ancestor). Even though the ancestor is walking with two other people, the mother and daughter are part of the prepositional phrase (s materom i kćerju). Because predak is a masculine singular noun, the verb must be in the masculine singular form je šetao.
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