Pijan muškarac ne vozi.

• pijan = drunk
• muškarac = man
• ne = not
• vozi = drives / is driving

A very literal gloss would be drunk man not drives.

Croatian does not have articles.

So muškarac can mean:

• a man
• the man

The exact meaning depends on context. In isolation, Pijan muškarac ne vozi is often understood as something like A drunk man doesn’t drive or The drunk man isn’t driving, depending on the situation.

Because adjectives in Croatian must agree with the noun in:

• gender
• number
• case

Muškarac is masculine singular nominative, so the adjective also appears in a matching masculine singular nominative form: pijan.

Compare:

• pijan muškarac = a drunk man
• pijana žena = a drunk woman
• pijano dijete = a drunk child

This is a very common question.

In masculine singular nominative, some Croatian adjectives can have:

• a short form: pijan
• a long form: pijani

At a beginner level, the simplest thing to know is:

• pijan muškarac is correct
• pijani muškarac is also possible and very common

Roughly speaking, the short form can feel more purely descriptive, while the long form can sound more definite or more fixed as an attributive form. In real everyday Croatian, you will encounter both.

It is in the nominative singular, because it is the subject of the sentence.

Here, muškarac is the person doing the action of vozi.

You can also notice that this noun changes in other cases:

• nominative: muškarac
• accusative/genitive: muškarca
• dative/locative: muškarcu

So the form muškarac specifically fits its role as the subject here.

Vozi is the 3rd person singular present tense of the verb voziti.

So:

• ja vozim = I drive
• ti voziš = you drive
• on/ona vozi = he/she drives

With muškarac, vozi means:

• he drives
• or he is driving, depending on context

It can mean either, depending on context.

Croatian present tense often covers both:

• a habitual meaning: doesn’t drive
• a current meaning: isn’t driving

So Pijan muškarac ne vozi could mean:

• A drunk man doesn’t drive
• The drunk man isn’t driving

English forces you to choose more clearly between those two, but Croatian often leaves that to context.

Because ne is the normal negation particle used with verbs, and it is usually written as a separate word:

• ne vozi = does not drive
• ne radi = does not work
• ne govori = does not speak

There are a few common exceptions in Croatian where the negative form is written together, but with vozi the standard form is ne vozi.

Croatian word order is more flexible than English word order.

Pijan muškarac ne vozi is a normal, neutral order:

• adjective + noun + negation + verb

But changing the order can change the emphasis.

A very important contrast is:

• Pijan muškarac ne vozi. = A drunk man does not drive / The drunk man isn’t driving.
• Muškarac ne vozi pijan. = The man does not drive drunk.

In the second sentence, pijan describes how he drives, not what kind of man he is. So word order can affect meaning.

A beginner-friendly approximation is:

• pijan ≈ PEE-yan
• muškarac ≈ MOO-shka-rats
• ne vozi ≈ neh VOH-zee

Useful sound notes:

• j is like English y
• š is like English sh
• c is like ts

So pijan muškarac ne vozi sounds roughly like:

PEE-yan MOO-shka-rats neh VOH-zee