Breakdown of Kvadrat što sam ga vidio velik je, a trokut je mali.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
a
and / but
on
he
velik
big
mali
small
vidjeti
to see
što
which, that (relative pronoun)
kvadrat
square
trokut
triangle
Questions & Answers about Kvadrat što sam ga vidio velik je, a trokut je mali.
Why does the sentence use što sam ga vidio instead of koji sam vidio?
Using što as an invariable relative pronoun (meaning "that" or "which") is an alternative to koji. When you use što to refer to a noun, you must include an extra pronoun inside the clause to show its grammatical case. Here, that is the accusative clitic ga (it) pointing back to the masculine noun kvadrat. It literally translates to "The square that I saw it".
Why is the enclitic verb je placed after velik instead of right after the subject?
The subject of the first half of the sentence is the entire phrase Kvadrat što sam ga vidio. While enclitics like je often follow the very first word of a sentence, they can also follow the first complete grammatical block. Because there is a natural pause after the long subject phrase, the adjective velik acts as the first word of the next intonation unit, so je tucks in right behind it.
Why does the sentence use a for "and" instead of i?
In Croatian, the conjunction a is used to show a contrast between two things, similar to "while" or "whereas" in English. Because the sentence is directly contrasting the size of the square with the size of the triangle, a is the most natural choice here instead of the simple addition word i.
Why is the adjective velik in its short form, but mali is in its long form?
When an adjective describes a subject after the verb "to be", standard rules say it should take the short (indefinite) form, which is why we see velik. However, for the word "small", the short form mal sounds awkward or archaic to many native speakers today, so the long (definite) form mali has become the standard accepted form in almost all everyday contexts.
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