Breakdown of Ovaj dijamant je ljepši nego što sam mislio.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
ovaj
this (m) / ova (f), ovo (n)
lijep
beautiful
misliti
to think
Questions & Answers about Ovaj dijamant je ljepši nego što sam mislio.
Why do we use nego što here instead of just od or nego?
We use nego što because we are comparing the diamond's beauty to an entire clause with an active verb (sam mislio). You use od + genitive when comparing directly to a noun or pronoun, and nego alone when directly comparing two nouns or adjectives without introducing a new verb clause.
Since the lesson covers both nego što and nego da, why couldn't I say nego da sam mislio?
nego da is used for hypothetical situations, choices, or alternatives, usually followed by the present or conditional tense (such as comparing two actions you might take). Here, the fact that you thought about the diamond is a real, completed action, so we must use nego što for a factual statement, followed by the indicative perfect tense (sam mislio).
The base adjective is lijep. Why does the spelling change to ljepši in the comparative?
This is a standard sound change you learned earlier but is easy to forget. When forming a comparative, the long ije syllable in the root of the adjective usually shortens to je. You will also see this in words like bijel (white) becoming bjelji and svijetao (bright) becoming svjetliji.
If a female speaker were saying this sentence, what exactly would change?