Breakdown of Instruktor sjedi iza nas i strah ga je.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
on
he
mi
we
i
and (additive)
iza
behind
strah
fear
sjediti
to sit, to be sitting
instruktor
instructor
Questions & Answers about Instruktor sjedi iza nas i strah ga je.
Why is "he is afraid" translated as strah ga je? Why not use on (he)?
In Croatian, specific feelings like fear (strah) or shame (sram) use a special structure. Instead of saying "he is afraid", you express it as "fear is [happening to] him". The feeling itself is the subject, and the person experiencing it is put in the accusative case—in this instance, the pronoun ga (him).
Why are the words in the order strah ga je instead of strah je ga?
Both ga (him) and je (is) are clitics (short, unstressed words) that must follow strict ordering rules. The rule in Croatian is that pronoun clitics like ga always come before the 3rd-person singular verb clitic je.
What case is nas in iza nas, and why?
Nas is in the genitive case. The preposition iza (behind) always requires the genitive case. Here, nas is the genitive form of the pronoun mi (we/us).
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