Breakdown of Sutra polažem ispit i strah me je.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
ja
I
i
and (additive)
sutra
tomorrow
ispit
exam
strah
fear
polagati
to take an exam
Questions & Answers about Sutra polažem ispit i strah me je.
Why does the Croatian sentence use strah me je instead of a verb like 'to have' or 'to be' (e.g., imam strah or ja sam strah)?
In Croatian, specific emotional states like fear (strah) and shame (sram) use a special accusative-experiencer structure. You use the feeling as a noun (strah = fear), followed by the person experiencing it as an accusative pronoun (me = me), and the 3rd-person singular verb 'to be' (je = is). You can think of it literally as 'fear is catching me'.
Wait, why is me in the accusative case? Don't we use the dative case for feelings, like when we say we are cold?
That is a great observation! You are right that physical sensations (like being cold or hot) use the dative case, for example, hladno mi je. However, these specific psychological states—like fear and shame—are exceptions that require the accusative case (me, te, ga, etc.) along with the noun for the feeling.
Why do we use the verb polažem for 'taking' an exam instead of a standard verb for 'take' like uzimam?
You cannot use uzimati (to take) because that verb only means to physically pick an object up with your hands. In Croatian, the set phrase for taking a test is polagati ispit. Polažem is the imperfective form, used because the process of writing the exam is happening tomorrow. If you want to say you successfully passed the exam, you use the perfective form: položiti ispit.
Is the word order strictly fixed as strah me je?
Yes! Both me and je are clitics (short, unstressed words), meaning they must go in the second position of their clause. The word i (and) connects two separate clauses, so strah acts as the first position of the new clause. When you have multiple clitics, the accusative clitic (me) must always come before the verb clitic (je).
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