Breakdown of Tko je, dovraga, pojeo moju tortu?
tko
who
torta
cake (layered)
pojesti
to eat (perfective)
dovraga
damn it! (mild expletive)
Questions & Answers about Tko je, dovraga, pojeo moju tortu?
What does dovraga literally mean?
While it translates as "the hell" in this sentence, it literally means "to the devil". It is made up of the preposition do ("to" or "up to") and vraga, which is the genitive case of vrag (devil). It acts as a fixed exclamation used to express frustration or surprise.
Why is the verb pojeo used here instead of jeo?
Pojeo is from pojesti, which is a perfective verb. This means the action is completely finished—someone ate the cake and now it is completely gone! If you used jeo (from the imperfective verb jesti), it would mean "Who was eating my cake?"
Since we don't know who ate the cake, why is pojeo in the masculine form?
In Croatian, when the subject is tko (who) and the person's identity is unknown, you always use the default masculine singular form for the past tense. Even if you strongly suspect a woman ate the cake, the question must be Tko je pojeo..., never Tko je pojela....
Why does the little verb je come before the phrase dovraga?
The word je is an enclitic, which is a "weak" word that generally must take the second position in a sentence. It firmly attaches to the first word, Tko. The exclamation dovraga is just extra commentary, so it gets inserted after the mandatory second-position enclitic and is set off by commas.
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