Breakdown of Ova knjiga je nova.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
knjiga
book
ovaj
this (m) / ova (f), ovo (n)
nov
new
Questions & Answers about Ova knjiga je nova.
Why do we use ova instead of ovaj or ovo?
The word knjiga (book) is a feminine noun, which you can usually tell because it ends in -a. In Croatian, the word for "this" has to match the gender of the noun it belongs to, so we use the feminine form ova.
Why is the word for new nova instead of just nov?
Adjectives also have to match the gender of the noun they describe. Because knjiga is feminine, the adjective takes the feminine ending -a, turning the base word nov into nova.
Is it possible to put je earlier in the sentence, like "Ova je knjiga nova"?
Yes, absolutely! The word je (is) is a little word called an enclitic, which naturally wants to sit in the second position of a sentence. You can treat the whole phrase Ova knjiga as the first block of information, or just the single word Ova, making both word orders perfectly correct.
Do ova and nova rhyme on purpose?
It is just a happy coincidence! Ova is the feminine form of "this" and nova is the feminine form of "new". They both end in -a here because they are both separately matching the feminine noun knjiga.