Breakdown of Drhtali su i bili blijedi kao da je zima.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
i
and (additive)
zima
winter / cold (noun)
kao
like, as
Questions & Answers about Drhtali su i bili blijedi kao da je zima.
Why do we use the present tense je zima when the rest of the sentence is in the past tense (drhtali su)?
When using kao da (as if) to express an impression, Croatian uses "relative tense." This means the tense in the kao da clause is based on the time of the main verb. Since it felt like winter at the exact same time they were trembling, we use the present tense je zima. If we said kao da je bila zima (past tense), it would mean they were trembling as if it had been winter previously.
Where is the auxiliary verb su for the second verb (bili blijedi)? Should it be i su bili blijedi?
You only need to use the auxiliary verb su once when stringing together multiple past tense verbs for the same subject. Since we already have Drhtali su at the beginning, we drop the su before bili to avoid repeating it.
How do we know the gender of "they" in this sentence?
We can tell "they" refers to a group of males, or a mixed group of males and females, because the active past participles (drhtali, bili) and the adjective (blijedi) all end in -i. If it were a group of only females, the sentence would be Drhtale su i bile blijede.
Why is the adjective blijed (pale) written as blijedi here?
Blijedi is the nominative plural masculine form of the adjective. It has to agree in case, gender, and number with the subject of the sentence. Since the subject is "they" (masculine/mixed plural, in the nominative case), the adjective must match it perfectly.