Breakdown of Štakori su mi izgrizli sve kabele na tavanu.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
na
on, at / to, onto (with motion) / about (thinking about)
mi
to me
sav
all (of a whole) / everyone, all (people) / everything
kabel
cable
tavan
attic
štakor
rat
izgristi
to chew up
Questions & Answers about Štakori su mi izgrizli sve kabele na tavanu.
Why is the word mi (to me) in this sentence if the rats didn't chew the speaker?
This is the dative of detriment, which is exactly what this lesson covers! It is used to show that an action negatively affected someone, even if they aren't the direct object of the verb. In English, this is often translated as 'on me', like saying 'The rats chewed up the cables on me'.
What verb does izgrizli come from, and how does it differ from grizli?
It comes from the perfective verb izgristi. The base imperfective verb gristi means to bite or to chew as an ongoing process. Adding the prefix iz- makes it perfective and gives it the sense of chewing something up or gnawing completely through it.
Why is the accusative plural kabele instead of kablove?
The word kabel (cable) is a masculine loanword. While you will often hear people use the long plural kablovi (and its accusative kablove) in casual speech, standard Croatian grammar prefers the short plural form kabeli (accusative kabele).
The English translation says 'in the attic'. Why does the Croatian use na tavanu instead of u tavanu?
In Croatian, certain spaces traditionally take the preposition na (on) rather than u (in) to indicate location. For an attic (tavan), you always use na followed by the Locative case (tavanu), similar to how you would say something is on the roof.
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