Breakdown of Kuće su velike, a sobe su čiste.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
a
and / but
kuća
house
velik
big
soba
room
čist
clean / pure
Questions & Answers about Kuće su velike, a sobe su čiste.
Why do kuće and sobe end in -e?
Both kuća (house) and soba (room) are regular feminine nouns that end in -a in their singular dictionary form. To make them plural, you simply change that -a to an -e. So, kuća becomes kuće and soba becomes sobe.
Do the adjectives velike and čiste also end in -e for the same reason?
Exactly! In Croatian, adjectives must match the noun they describe in gender, number, and case. Since kuće and sobe are feminine plural nouns, the adjectives velik (big) and čist (clean) take the feminine plural ending, which is also -e.
The translation says "and", so why does the sentence use a instead of i?
While i simply connects items in a list (like "apples and oranges"), a is used to connect two different thoughts, compare things, or introduce a slight contrast. Here, you are comparing two different subjects (the houses vs. the rooms), so a is the natural choice. It usually translates as "and", "but", or "while".
Why do we need the word su twice in this sentence?
The sentence consists of two separate clauses connected by a: "The houses are big" and "the rooms are clean." The word su is the plural form of the verb "to be" (are). Because it is a short, unstressed word called an enclitic, it must take the second position in its own part of the sentence. Therefore, it appears after the first word of the first part (Kuće) and after the first word of the second part (sobe).
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