Breakdown of Avion je bio poletio prije polaska vlaka.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
avion
airplane
vlak
train
prije
before, earlier
Questions & Answers about Avion je bio poletio prije polaska vlaka.
How exactly is the pluperfect tense built in je bio poletio?
The pluperfect expresses an action that happened before another past action. Here, it is formed using the perfect tense of biti (to be) for a third-person masculine subject (je bio), followed by the past participle of the main verb poletjeti (poletio).
Is there another way to form the pluperfect for this sentence?
Yes. You can also form the pluperfect using the older imperfect tense of biti plus the past participle: Avion bijaše poletio. However, the form used in this sentence (je bio poletio) is much more common in everyday spoken Croatian.
Why do we say prije polaska vlaka instead of prije polazak vlak?
The preposition prije (before) always requires the genitive case. Because of this, both the noun polazak (departure) and the noun possessing it, vlak (train), must take their genitive endings, giving us polaska and vlaka.
What happened to the 'a' in polazak when it became polaska?
This is a classic example of the fleeting 'a' (nepostojano a). In many masculine Croatian nouns ending in a consonant plus -ak, that final a drops out when a grammatical ending is added. So, adding the genitive -a ending to polazak results in polaska, making it smoother to pronounce.