Nema dovoljno vremena za ručak.

to have

Breakdown of Nema dovoljno vremena za ručak.

• ne: not
• za: for
• ručak: lunch

Questions & Answers about Nema dovoljno vremena za ručak.

What does nema do here—does it mean “there isn’t” or “doesn’t have”?

Here nema is impersonal and means there isn’t / there isn’t any. It’s the opposite of impersonal ima (there is/are). With a person as subject, nema can also mean “doesn’t have,” e.g., Ana nema auto (Ana doesn’t have a car), but in your sentence there’s no subject: it simply states non-existence/insufficiency.

Why is it vremena and not vrijeme?

Because dovoljno (“enough [of]”) is a quantity word that’s followed by the genitive case. The genitive singular of vrijeme is vremena. So you get dovoljno vremena. This also fits the common pattern where with (ne)ima + an indefinite mass noun, Croatian prefers the genitive to express “some amount of.”

Is vremena plural here?

No—here it’s genitive singular. Confusingly, vremena is also the nominative plural (“times”), as in Vremena su se promijenila (Times have changed). In your sentence, the grammar after dovoljno makes it genitive singular: “enough time.”

Could I say Ne postoji dovoljno vremena za ručak instead?

Grammatically yes, but it sounds heavy and formal. The idiomatic way to say “there isn’t enough time” is with nema: Nema dovoljno vremena za ručak.