Breakdown of Je li danas lijepo vrijeme?
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
lijep
beautiful
danas
today
li
question particle
Questions & Answers about Je li danas lijepo vrijeme?
Why does this sentence start with Je li instead of just asking Je danas...?
Je li is the standard way to ask a yes/no question in Croatian. You take the verb (here, je meaning "is") and add the question particle li. You can't just start with the verb alone like you do in English.
Can I change the word order and put danas at the end, like in English?
Yes, you could say Je li lijepo vrijeme danas? Croatian word order is quite flexible. However, the phrase Je li is fixed at the beginning, because the question word li always wants to be in the second position of the sentence.
Why does the adjective end in -o (lijepo instead of lijep or lijepa)?
Adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. The noun vrijeme (weather) is a neuter noun, so the adjective takes the neuter ending -o to become lijepo.
I learned before that vrijeme means "time". Does it also mean "weather"?
Yes, vrijeme means both "time" and "weather". You can easily tell which one people mean from the context. When someone asks if it is lijepo (nice), they are almost certainly talking about the weather!