Pijan muškarac ne smije pucati.

not

Breakdown of Pijan muškarac ne smije pucati.

• smjeti: to be allowed to
• muškarac: man; adult male
• pijan: drunk

Questions & Answers about Pijan muškarac ne smije pucati.

Why is it pijan muškarac and not pijani muškarac?

Croatian masculine adjectives can have a short form and a long form in the nominative singular.

• pijan = short form
• pijani = long form

In modern Croatian, both can appear before a noun, and both can mean drunk here. The version in your sentence, pijan muškarac, is perfectly possible. Pijani muškarac is also very common and may sound a bit fuller or more definite, depending on style and context.

So the sentence is not wrong at all; it is just using the shorter adjective form.

What case is muškarac, and how can I tell?

Muškarac is in the nominative singular because it is the subject of the sentence.

In Pijan muškarac ne smije pucati, the person doing the action is the drunk man, so Croatian uses the nominative.

You can also see agreement:

• pijan = masculine singular nominative
• muškarac = masculine singular nominative

If it were an object, the form would change, for example:

• Vidim pijanog muškarca. = I see a drunk man.

Why is there no word for a or the?