Breakdown of Vilenjak će sigurno putovati nepoznatim prostranstvom.
htjeti
to want (intent, will)
putovati
to travel
sigurno
surely
nepoznat
unknown
vilenjak
elf
prostranstvo
expanse
Questions & Answers about Vilenjak će sigurno putovati nepoznatim prostranstvom.
Why is 'through the unknown expanse' translated as nepoznatim prostranstvom without a preposition like kroz?
This is the bare Instrumental of path, which is exactly what this lesson covers! In Croatian, when you travel over a surface, through a space, or along a path, you often use the Instrumental case entirely on its own. It gives the sense of moving via or across that space. You could also say kroz nepoznato prostranstvo using the Accusative case, but the bare Instrumental is very natural for continuous travel across a landscape.
The word sigurno can mean 'safely' or 'certainly'. Why is it translated as 'certainly' here?
When placed early in a sentence modifying the whole clause, sigurno acts as an adverb meaning 'certainly', 'surely', or 'for sure'. While it can mean 'safely' depending on the context, if you specifically wanted to emphasize traveling in a safe physical manner, you would usually use a phrase like na siguran način (in a safe way) to avoid confusion.
If we dropped the subject Vilenjak, how would the word order at the start of the sentence change?
The future tense helper će is an enclitic, meaning it must take the second grammatical position in the sentence. If you remove Vilenjak, the verb moves up to support the enclitic, giving us: Putovat će sigurno... This is a good time to remember an earlier rule: when an infinitive ending in '-ti' comes directly before će, it drops its final 'i'.
What gender is the noun prostranstvom?
It is a neuter noun, and its dictionary (Nominative) form is prostranstvo (expanse or vast space). Neuter nouns ending in '-o' share the exact same Instrumental ending as masculine nouns, which is -om. The adjective nepoznatim matches this perfectly with its masculine/neuter Instrumental ending -im.
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