Breakdown of Veleposlanik UN-a stajao je ispred vijeća.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
ispred
in front of
stajati
to stand
veleposlanik
ambassador
UN
the UN
vijeće
council
Questions & Answers about Veleposlanik UN-a stajao je ispred vijeća.
Why is there a hyphen in UN-a?
In Croatian, capitalized acronyms like UN are typically treated as masculine nouns and take standard grammatical endings. A hyphen is used to connect the capitalized acronym to its lowercase ending. Here, we need the genitive case for "of the UN," so the regular masculine genitive ending -a is attached.
How do you pronounce UN-a when reading this sentence aloud?
You read the Croatian names of the individual letters and blend them directly with the ending. U is pronounced like "oo" and N is "en". Therefore, UN-a is pronounced out loud as "u-en-a".
Why does the enclitic je come after UN-a rather than right after the very first word, Veleposlanik?
Because Veleposlanik UN-a (The UN ambassador) forms a single, tightly connected noun phrase. While enclitics like je naturally want to sit in the "second position" of a sentence, Croatian usually counts a full cohesive phrase as the first position. Splitting the phrase up (Veleposlanik je UN-a...) is technically allowed but sounds very clunky here.
Why is the word for "council" (vijeće) written here as vijeća?
The preposition ispred (in front of) always requires the following noun to be in the genitive case. Because vijeće is a neuter noun ending in -e, its genitive singular form takes the ending -a, becoming vijeća.
Learn Veleposlanik UN-a stajao je ispred vijeća and more in Croatian
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free