Breakdown of Možeš li mi još jednom reći gdje je toalet?
Questions & Answers about Možeš li mi još jednom reći gdje je toalet?
Možeš is “you can / are able (to)” – 2nd person singular of moći (to be able).
Adding li turns it into a yes/no question:
- Možeš. – You can.
- Možeš li…? – Can you…?
So Možeš li literally means “Can you…?” and signals the start of a polite request or question.
In standard Croatian, li is the usual way to turn a statement into a yes/no question when you keep the normal word order:
- Možeš mi reći… – You can tell me…
- Možeš li mi reći…? – Can you tell me…?
You can ask without li in a more casual way by using intonation:
- Možeš mi još jednom reći gdje je toalet? (spoken with rising intonation at the end)
That will still be understood as a question, but Možeš li mi…? sounds a bit clearer and more neutral/polite in many contexts.
Mi is the unstressed dative pronoun “to me / for me”.
- Možeš li mi reći…? – Can you tell me…?
You could leave it out grammatically:
- Možeš li još jednom reći gdje je toalet?
…but then the sentence is more like “Can you say again where the toilet is?” without explicitly saying to whom. In natural Croatian, when you are the person being told, you normally include mi to make it personal and clear.
So mi is not absolutely required, but it is normal and more natural here.
Short unstressed pronouns like mi are clitics and obey fairly strict word-order rules in Croatian. In main clauses, they normally go into second position in a fixed clitic cluster.
In your sentence:
- Možeš – first (stressed) word
- then clitics: li mi
- then the rest: još jednom reći…
So:
- ✅ Možeš li mi još jednom reći gdje je toalet?
- ❌ Možeš li još jednom mi reći… (sounds clearly wrong)
You can move još jednom around a bit:
- Možeš li mi još jednom reći…?
- Možeš li mi reći još jednom…?
…but mi (and li) must stay in the clitic position right after the first stressed word.
After moći (možeš = you can), Croatian normally uses the infinitive of the main verb:
- možeš reći – you can say/tell
- možeš vidjeti – you can see
- možeš doći – you can come
So reći is the infinitive “to say / to tell”.
Using a present form like kažeš would change the structure and meaning:
- Možeš li mi reći…? – Can you tell me…? (modal verb + infinitive)
- Kažeš mi gdje je toalet. – You are telling me where the toilet is. (no moći)
There is no present form rečeš in standard Croatian; you’d use reći in infinitive or forms of reknuti / kazati in other tenses, but in this construction možeš reći is the normal pattern.
Još jednom literally means “one more time / once more”.
- Možeš li mi još jednom reći…? – Can you tell me once more / one more time…?
Other common options:
- opet – again (more general, can be neutral or slightly annoyed depending on tone)
- ponovno – again, anew (a bit more formal/literary than opet)
All three can work in many contexts, but here:
- još jednom emphasizes one more repetition in a polite way.
- Možeš li mi opet reći…? is also possible, but depending on tone it might sound a tiny bit more like “again, yet again”.
For a learner, using još jednom in this polite request is a very safe, natural choice.
In this sentence, gdje je toalet is an indirect question (a subordinate clause) inside the larger yes/no question:
- Main question: Možeš li mi još jednom reći…? – Can you tell me again…?
- Embedded question: gdje je toalet – where the toilet is
So the full meaning is: “Can you tell me once more where the toilet is?”
If you say it as a direct question, you would have:
- Gdje je toalet? – Where is the toilet?
But in your sentence, there is just one question mark at the end of the whole sentence, not after gdje je toalet.
No. Inside this kind of embedded question, the word order stays the same as in a normal statement:
- Statement: Toalet je tamo. – The toilet is there.
- Embedded: gdje je toalet – where the toilet is
You cannot move je (is) to the end:
- ❌ gdje toalet je – wrong / ungrammatical in standard Croatian
So both as a direct question and inside a bigger sentence, the natural order here is gdje je toalet.
Both mean “where”, but they belong to different standards:
- gdje – standard in Croatian
- gde – standard in Serbian (Ekavian pronunciation)
If you are learning Croatian, you should consistently use gdje:
- Gdje je toalet? – Where is the toilet?
Using gde will usually just sound Serbian rather than Croatian.
All are related to bathrooms/toilets, but with different nuances:
toalet
- Often used in public places (cafés, restaurants, malls).
- Neutral, understood everywhere.
- Matches English toilet (British usage).
WC (pronounced roughly like ve-ce)
- Very common on signs: WC, Muški WC, Ženski WC.
- Colloquial but standard; everyone understands it.
kupaonica
- Literally bathroom (a room for washing, not only the toilet).
- More for homes: Idem u kupaonicu. – I’m going to the bathroom.
In a café or restaurant in Croatia, the most natural questions are:
- Gdje je toalet?
- Gdje je WC?
Your sentence with toalet is perfectly natural for that context.
Use vi (formal/plural “you”) instead of ti, and often add molim vas:
- Možete li mi još jednom reći gdje je toalet?
– Formal: Can you tell me once more where the toilet is?
Even more polite:
- Oprostite, možete li mi još jednom reći gdje je toalet, molim vas?
– Excuse me, could you tell me once more where the toilet is, please?
Key change:
- možeš (informal, singular) → možete (formal or plural)
Gdje
- Spelled g-d-j-e, but it’s pronounced as one smooth sequence.
- Rough approximation: “gyeh”
- g like in get
- dje merges to something like dye / gye
- Try saying g + dje quickly: g-dyeh → gyeh.
Toalet
- Syllables: to-a-let (three syllables)
- Stress is usually on the last syllable: toa-LET.
- Vowel sounds are pure, as in Spanish or Italian, not reduced like in English.
Putting it together naturally:
- Možeš li mi još jednom reći gdje je toalet?
(Listen for gyeh and toa-LET.)