Breakdown of Danas ga traži obitelj.
danas
today
tražiti
to look for / to demand, request
ga
him, it (accusative clitic)
obitelj
family (f)
Questions & Answers about Danas ga traži obitelj.
Why is ga placed right after Danas instead of after the verb?
ga is a special kind of short, unstressed pronoun called a clitic. In Croatian, clitics follow a strict rule: they almost always have to take the second position in a sentence. Since Danas (Today) takes up the first position, ga must jump into the second spot, pushing the verb traži to the third.
What case is ga in this sentence?
It is in the accusative case. ga is the short accusative form of the pronoun on (he). We use the accusative here because "he" is the direct object—the person receiving the action of being looked for.
Why is the subject obitelj at the very end of the sentence?
Croatian word order is much more flexible than English! Because cases like the accusative (ga) already tell us who is being looked for, we don't have to rely on strict Subject-Verb-Object order. The subject often moves around for flow or emphasis. Here, starting with Danas ga traži... sounds very natural, leaving the subject for the end.
obitelj ends in a consonant. Doesn't that mean it should be a masculine noun?
Usually, yes! Most Croatian nouns that end in a consonant are masculine. However, there is a small, important group of feminine nouns that end in a consonant. obitelj (family) is one of the most common ones, so it is just one of those exceptions you have to memorize.