Policija čuva zatvor.

The police are guarding the prison.

Breakdown of Policija čuva zatvor.

• policija: police
• čuvati: to protect
• zatvor: a prison

Questions & Answers about Policija čuva zatvor.

Why is policija treated as singular when English police is usually plural?

In Croatian, policija is a singular feminine noun. It refers to the police as an institution or force, not to individual police officers.

So:

• policija čuva = the police guards / is guarding
• not policija čuvaju

If you want to talk about individual police officers, you would use a different noun, such as:

• policajac = police officer, policeman
• policajci = police officers, policemen

So even though English says the police are, Croatian says policija je or policija čuva, with singular agreement.

What case are policija and zatvor in?

In this sentence:

• policija is in the nominative singular because it is the subject
• zatvor is in the accusative singular because it is the direct object

So the structure is:

• Policija = who is doing the action
• čuva = the action
• zatvor = what is being guarded

A useful thing to notice is that zatvor is a masculine inanimate noun, and in Croatian, masculine inanimate nouns often have the same form in nominative and accusative singular. That is why it stays zatvor, not zatvora.