Questions & Answers about Milijun ljudi živi ovdje.
Why is it milijun ljudi and not some other form of people?
After milijun (million), Croatian normally uses the following noun in the genitive plural.
So:
- milijun ljudi = a million people
- milijun stanovnika = a million inhabitants
- milijun kuća = a million houses
The word ljudi is the form used here for people, and in spelling it looks the same as the nominative plural. So even though the form does not visibly change, its role here is genitive plural after milijun.
Why is the verb živi singular? Shouldn’t it be plural because there are many people?
This is a very common question. In Croatian, milijun is grammatically a singular noun, and it acts as the head of the subject.
So the sentence is structured like:
- Milijun = the grammatical subject head
- ljudi = dependent noun telling you a million of whom
Because of that, the verb is usually singular:
- Milijun ljudi živi ovdje.
This is similar in logic to English A million people lives here, except English does not do that, while Croatian often does.
In standard Croatian, singular agreement after words like milijun is normal and expected.