Breakdown of Naš krevet je grozan i madrac je jako star.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
i
and (additive)
star
old
krevet
bed
naš
our
jako
very, strongly (colloquial)
grozan
terrible
madrac
mattress
Questions & Answers about Naš krevet je grozan i madrac je jako star.
Why do we use grozan and star instead of grozni and stari here?
In this sentence, the adjectives come after the verb je (is) to describe the subject. These are called predicate adjectives, and in Croatian, they usually take the short (indefinite) form. So we use the short forms grozan and star rather than the long forms grozni and stari.
Since this lesson covers nikakav, how would I use it here to say 'Our bed is absolutely worthless'?
You could replace grozan with nikakav and say: Naš krevet je nikakav. Even though nikakav literally means 'no kind of', it is very commonly used as an adjective in everyday Croatian to describe something as being of terrible quality or completely useless.
If I wanted to talk about a terrible room (soba), would it be soba je grozana?
No, it would be soba je grozna. The 'a' at the end of grozan is a fleeting 'a'. It appears in the masculine nominative singular but drops out when you add endings for other genders or cases, such as the feminine ending in grozna.
Why is the second je placed directly after madrac?
The word je is an enclitic, which means it wants to sit in the second logical position of its clause. The conjunction i (and) acts as a boundary for a new clause. That new clause starts with madrac (position 1), so je naturally drops into position 2 right behind it.
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