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Mogu li razgovarati s gospođom Perić?

Mogu li razgovarati s gospođom Perić?
May I speak with Mrs Perić?
From Lesson 212:On the phone (javiti se, uključiti)·Croatian

Breakdown of Mogu li razgovarati s gospođom Perić?

gospođa
lady
moći
can
razgovarati
to talk

Questions & Answers about Mogu li razgovarati s gospođom Perić?

Why isn't the surname Perić declined to match gospođom?
In Croatian, female surnames that end in a consonant (like Perić) do not change their endings for different grammatical cases. Only the title (gospođom) takes the instrumental case ending. If you were asking to speak with a man, both the title and the surname would change (for example, s gospodinom Perićem).
Why do we use the short preposition s instead of sa here?
The preposition meaning 'with' is normally just s. You only add the 'a' to make it sa when the following word starts with a sound that makes it hard to pronounce together, such as s, z, š, or ž. Since gospođom starts with a 'g', the short form s is used.
Why does the word for Mrs. (gospođa) change to gospođom?
The preposition s (with) always requires the instrumental case when it describes doing an activity accompanied by someone. The base word gospođa changes its '-a' ending to '-om' to form the instrumental case.
Could I ask this using Da li mogu instead of Mogu li?
Yes, Da li mogu razgovarati is grammatically correct and very common in everyday spoken Croatian. However, in standard written Croatian, it is considered better style to put the verb first and use the question word li, which gives us Mogu li.

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