Questions & Answers about On kosi travu ispod drveća.
Why does the sentence use drveća instead of a regular plural like drva?
Drveće is a collective noun ending in -je. Instead of referring to individual, countable trees, it refers to trees as a collective group or mass. Grammatically, these collective nouns are treated as singular neuter nouns, even though they translate to a plural concept in English.
Why is the collective noun spelled drveća instead of drveće here?
The preposition ispod (under) always requires the noun that follows it to be in the genitive case. Because collective nouns like drveće decline exactly like regular singular neuter nouns, its genitive ending is -a, making it drveća.
Why is the word for grass written as travu instead of trava?
The noun trava (grass) is the direct object receiving the action of the verb kositi (to mow), so it must be in the accusative case. For singular feminine nouns ending in -a, the accusative ending changes to -u.
Is the verb kosi related to the word kosa (hair)?
They look related, but it is just a coincidence! The verb kositi (to mow) comes from the traditional farming tool kosa (a scythe). While kosa is also the Croatian word for hair, they are homonyms—words that sound the same but have entirely different roots.