Breakdown of Njezin zarasli vrt je pun smeća.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
pun
full
vrt
garden
njezin
her
smeće
trash
zarasao
overgrown
Questions & Answers about Njezin zarasli vrt je pun smeća.
The word for "overgrown" is zarasli. Isn't the past participle of zarasti usually zarastao?
Yes, when forming the past tense (like vrt je zarastao), you use the standard active past participle. However, when you use this participle directly before a noun as an adjective, it must take definite adjective endings. The stem of zarastao is zarasl-, and adding the masculine nominative definite ending -i gives us zarasli.
Why does zarasli end in the definite -i, but pun does not?
Zarasli is an attributive adjective—it comes directly before the noun it modifies (vrt)—and participles used this way almost always take definite endings. Pun is a predicative adjective, coming right after the verb je to describe the subject. In Croatian, predicative adjectives generally take the indefinite form (without the extra -i) if the adjective has one.
Why is the word for "trash" (smeće) in the genitive case (smeća) here?
The adjective pun (full) requires the noun that follows it to be in the genitive case. This represents the "of" in the English phrase "full of trash". Since smeće is a neuter noun, its genitive singular ending is -a.
Could I use njen instead of njezin at the beginning of the sentence?
Absolutely. Both njezin and njen mean "her" and they are completely interchangeable. Njezin is just a slightly longer form that is heavily favored in standard written Croatian, but njen zarasli vrt is also perfectly correct and very common in everyday speech.
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