Breakdown of Ovo su zabrinjavajuće vijesti.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
ovaj
this (m) / ova (f), ovo (n)
vijest
news
zabrinjavajući
worrying
Questions & Answers about Ovo su zabrinjavajuće vijesti.
How is the adjective zabrinjavajuće formed from a verb?
It is a present active participle used as an adjective. It is formed from the imperfective verb zabrinjavati (to worry). You take the third-person plural present tense (zabrinjavaju) and add -ći to get the base participle zabrinjavajući (worrying). When used as an adjective, it declines to match the noun it describes.
Why does zabrinjavajuće end in -e here instead of -i or -a?
Because it is modifying vijesti, which is feminine plural. When present participles are used as adjectives, they take standard adjective endings. For a feminine nominative plural noun, the adjective ending is -e.
Why is the verb plural (su) when the English translation uses the singular 'This is'?
In Croatian, vijest (news) is a countable noun, and it is most commonly used in the plural (vijesti) to refer to news in general. When you use the fixed neuter pronoun ovo to introduce a general concept, the verb 'to be' must agree with the noun that follows it. Since vijesti is plural, you must use su.
If vijesti is feminine plural, why does it end in -i instead of -e?
Vijest is an i-declension noun, meaning it is a feminine noun that ends in a consonant in its singular form. These nouns follow a different declension pattern than typical feminine nouns ending in -a. In the nominative plural, i-declension nouns always end in -i.
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