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Questions & Answers about Stol je ovdje.
How can I tell what gender stol is?
In Croatian, you can usually figure out a noun's gender by looking at its last letter. Because stol ends in a consonant (the letter l), it is a masculine noun. As a quick reminder: words ending in -a are typically feminine, and words ending in -o or -e are usually neuter.
Why is stol in the nominative case?
The nominative case is the basic dictionary form of a noun. It is used for the subject of a sentence—the person or thing doing the action or being described. Since the table is the thing that "is here", it is the subject, so it simply stays in its base form, stol.
The English translation says "The table", but is there a Croatian word for "the" in this sentence?
No, Croatian doesn't use articles like "a", "an", or "the". The single word stol can mean "a table" or "the table". You rely entirely on the context of the conversation to know which one is meant.
Could I flip the sentence and say Ovdje stol je?
No, that would sound wrong to a Croatian speaker. The word je (is) is a special type of short, unstressed word called an enclitic. A major rule in Croatian is that these short words almost always have to go in the exact second position of a sentence. You could, however, say Ovdje je stol (Here is the table), because je safely stays in the second spot!