Questions & Answers about Čini mi se da će padati kiša.
The phrase Čini mi se translates to 'It seems to me', but what is the literal grammar happening here?
The verb is činiti se, a reflexive verb meaning 'to seem'. The word mi is the short dative form of ja (I), meaning 'to me'. Because it is an enclitic (a small unstressed word), mi takes the second position in the clause, pushing the reflexive pronoun se to the third position.
Why is the subject kiša placed at the very end of the sentence?
In Croatian weather expressions, it is highly idiomatic to place the subject at the end. While you could grammatically say da će kiša padati, putting kiša at the end sounds much more natural to a native speaker when predicting the weather.
In English we say 'it is going to rain', but how does the Croatian phrase će padati kiša literally translate?
While the verb kišiti exists for 'to rain', it is rarely used in everyday speech. Instead, Croatian typically says 'rain will fall'. The word kiša (rain) is the subject doing the action, so it is in the nominative case, and će padati is the future tense of the verb padati (to fall).
Why use the imperfective verb padati here instead of the perfective form pasti?
When predicting that it will rain, you are talking about an ongoing weather condition rather than a single, instantly completed action. Because the rainfall will last for a duration of time, the imperfective verb padati is the appropriate choice.
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