Breakdown of Gdje je ova škola?
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
gdje
where
ovaj
this (m) / ova (f), ovo (n)
škola
school
Questions & Answers about Gdje je ova škola?
Why do we use ova instead of ovaj or ovo?
The word for "this" must match the gender of the noun it points to. Because škola (school) is a feminine noun, we must use the feminine form ova. You would use ovaj for masculine nouns and ovo for neuter nouns.
How do we know that škola is a feminine noun?
In Croatian, you can almost always figure out a noun's gender by looking at its last letter in the dictionary form. Nouns that end in -a, like škola, are almost all feminine.
If I wanted to say "Where is THAT school?", would I still use ova?
No. Ova specifically means "this" (something physically or mentally close to the speaker). To say "that", you would use a different demonstrative pronoun, such as ta (that school near you) or ona (that school way over there).
Why does je come before ova škola? Can I say "Gdje ova škola je"?
You should not put je at the end. The word je (is) is a short, unstressed "clitic" word. In Croatian, these weak words naturally want to sit in the second position of a sentence. Here, it jumps right into the second spot, immediately after the question word gdje.