Questions & Answers about Vi ste sretni ljudi.
Does vi mean plural "you" or formal "you" here?
It can be both! In Croatian, vi is used when talking to a group of people ("you all"), just like in this sentence. However, it is also used as a polite, formal "you" when speaking to a single person, like a stranger or a teacher. In both cases, it pairs with the plural verb ste.
I learned the word for "person" is čovjek. Why does this sentence use ljudi?
ljudi is the plural form of čovjek. It is a completely irregular word, very similar to how "person" becomes "people" in English. So, čovjek means "person" or "man", and ljudi means "people".
Why does the word for happy end in -i (sretni)?
Adjectives in Croatian have to match the noun they describe in gender and number. Because ljudi acts as a masculine plural noun, the base adjective sretan (happy) drops its "a" and takes the masculine plural ending -i to become sretni.
Can I drop the pronoun vi and just say Ste sretni ljudi?
You can drop vi, but you cannot start the sentence with ste. The word ste is a clitic, which is a weak "short" word that usually needs to take the second position in a sentence. If you want to drop vi, you have to rearrange the words so ste comes second, like this: Sretni ste ljudi.
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