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Learn Hardcore Croatian: Dosje ima stotinu stranica. - The dossier has a hundred pages.

Hardcore Croatian
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/Dosje ima stotinu stranica.

Dosje ima stotinu stranica.

Dosje ima stotinu stranica.

The dossier has a hundred pages.

Breakdown of Dosje ima stotinu stranica.

a hundred; hundreds

a dossier; a case file

Questions & Answers about Dosje ima stotinu stranica.

Why is ima used here?

Because Croatian uses imati (to have) in the same basic way English does.

So Dosje ima stotinu stranica literally has the structure:

Dosje = the file / dossier
ima = has
stotinu stranica = one hundred pages

So the sentence is built very naturally as subject + verb + object.

What case is dosje in?

Dosje is the subject, so here it is in the nominative.

A useful extra point: dosje is a borrowed word, and in standard Croatian it is often treated as indeclinable, meaning its form usually stays the same across cases. You will often still identify its case from the sentence structure, not from a changed ending.

In this sentence, it is nominative because it is the thing that has the pages.

Why is it stotinu, not sto?

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Both can be used, but they work a little differently.

sto = one hundred
stotinu = the accusative form of stotina (a hundred)

Because ima takes a direct object, Croatian can express this as:

ima sto stranica
ima stotinu stranica

Both are natural, and both mean the same thing here.

So stotinu appears because the phrase is functioning as the object of ima.

Why is stranica used, not stranice?

Because after sto / stotinu and other numbers from 5 upward, Croatian normally uses the genitive plural of the noun.

The noun is:

stranica = page

Its relevant forms are:

1 stranica
2, 3, 4 stranice
5+ stranica

So with sto or stotinu, you get:

sto stranica
stotinu stranica

That is why you do not see stranice here.

Why does stranica look like singular if it means pages?

This is a very common point of confusion.

For many feminine nouns ending in -a, the genitive plural can look the same as the nominative singular.

So:

nominative singular: stranica = page
genitive plural: stranica = of pages

They look identical, but they are doing different jobs.

In stotinu stranica, the form stranica is genitive plural, even though it looks like the singular dictionary form.

What is the basic word order here? Is it flexible?

The sentence uses the most neutral word order:

Dosje
- ima
  - stotinu stranica
Subject + verb + object

Yes, Croatian word order is fairly flexible, so other orders are possible for emphasis. For example, you might move stotinu stranica forward if you want to stress the number.

But for a plain, neutral statement, this version is very natural.

Is dosje masculine, feminine, or neuter?

It is generally treated as masculine in Croatian.

So you would typically get things like:

taj dosje = that file/dossier
ovaj dosje = this file/dossier

Even though the word ends in -e, it is not neuter in the usual way native Croatian nouns are.

How do you pronounce dosje?

A good approximation is:

dosje ≈ DOS-yeh

The sj here sounds like sy in English yes, not like the s in measure.

And:

stranica ≈ STRA-nee-tsa

The c in Croatian is pronounced ts.

Is there another natural way to say the same thing?

Yes. A very common alternative is:

Dosje ima sto stranica.

You may also hear a structure more like There are 100 pages in the file, for example:

U dosjeu je sto stranica.

So the original sentence is perfectly natural, but it is not the only way Croatian can express the idea.

What should I remember from this sentence as a grammar pattern?

A very useful pattern is:

[thing] + ima + [number] + [noun]

For example:

Knjiga ima dvjesto stranica. = The book has two hundred pages.
Kuća ima pet soba. = The house has five rooms.

The key grammar point is this:

after 1: usually singular
after 2, 3, 4: a different plural form
after 5 and more: usually genitive plural

So stotinu stranica is a great example of an important Croatian number pattern.

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