Breakdown of To što nema struje otežava posao kada pada mrak.
posao
job / work
nemati
to not have
struja
electricity
mrak
darkness
kada
when / if (with conditional)
padati
to fall
to što
the fact that / that which
otežavati
to make difficult
Questions & Answers about To što nema struje otežava posao kada pada mrak.
Why do we use To što at the beginning of this sentence, and could we just say Što nema struje...?
To što acts as a compound subject here, standing in for the entire clause nema struje (there is no electricity). In English, we usually translate this structure as "The fact that...". While you might occasionally hear just što in casual speech, starting the sentence with To što clearly packages the whole idea into a single grammatical subject for the main verb, otežava (makes difficult).
Why is struja in the genitive case (struje)?
This is a quick refresher on a common Croatian construction for expressing the absence or lack of something. When the verb nemati (literally "to not have") is used impersonally to mean "there is no," the thing that is missing must be in the genitive case. So, "there is no electricity" becomes nema struje.
How is the verb otežava formed, and what does it literally mean?
Otežava comes from the imperfective verb otežavati. It is built from the adjective root težak (heavy or difficult). Adding the prefix o- and the suffix -avati turns it into a verb meaning "to make heavy" or "to make difficult." So literally, the lack of electricity "makes the work heavy."
In English we say "when it gets dark", but how is kada pada mrak structured literally?
Literally, it translates to "when darkness falls." Croatian uses the verb padati (to fall) and the noun mrak (darkness) as the subject of that verb. You will often see this natural combination (pada mrak, pala je noć) to express that it is getting dark or that night is setting in.
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