Learn Croatian: Gdje su studenti? - Where are the students?

In Croatian, regular masculine nouns ending in a consonant (like student) form their plural by adding an -i at the end. So, student becomes studenti.

Why do we use su here instead of je?

su is the 'they' form of the verb 'to be' (are). Because studenti is plural (the students), the verb must match it. If we were asking about one student, we would use the singular je (is): Gdje je student?

Can I change the word order to Gdje studenti su?

No, that sounds unnatural in Croatian. The word su is a special, unstressed word (a clitic) that almost always wants to be in the second position in a sentence. Therefore, it must directly follow the first word, Gdje.

Where is the word for 'the' in this sentence?

Croatian does not have words for 'a', 'an', or 'the' (articles). The word studenti can mean either 'students' or 'the students' depending on the situation.