Learn Hardcore Croatian: Ona zna zabaviti goste pričajući priče o tome što se dogodilo u njihovom djetinjstvu, čak i kad je tema malo neugodna. - She knows how to entertain the guests by telling stories about what happened in their childhood, even when the topic is a bit unpleasant.

In the sentence, why do we say ona zna zabaviti goste instead of something like ona može zabaviti goste or ona umije zabaviti goste? What does zna + infinitive mean exactly?

In Croatian, znati + infinitive usually means “to know how to do something”, i.e. to have the skill.

ona zna zabaviti goste ≈ she knows how to entertain guests (she has that skill, she is good at it)
ona može zabaviti goste ≈ she can/is able to entertain guests (it is possible for her, circumstances allow it)
ona umije zabaviti goste is very close to zna zabaviti in meaning (she knows how to / is skilled at entertaining guests), but umjeti is:
- a bit more “bookish” / formal or stylistically marked
- used less frequently in everyday speech than znati in this construction.

So zna zabaviti focuses on her competence/skill, not just possibility.

What is the difference between zabaviti and zabavljati? Could we say ona zna zabavljati goste?

Zabaviti and zabavljati are a perfective–imperfective pair:

zabaviti – perfective (focus on the result, on managing to entertain someone)
zabavljati – imperfective (focus on the ongoing activity, the process of entertaining)

Examples:

On zna zabaviti goste. – He knows how to entertain guests (so that they end up entertained).
On zna zabavljati goste. – He knows how to keep guests entertained (he can entertain them for some time, he is good at entertaining as an activity).

In your sentence, ona zna zabaviti goste suggests she can successfully entertain them (achieve the result).
Ona zna zabavljati goste is also grammatically correct, but slightly shifts the nuance toward the process of entertaining. Both would be understood almost the same in everyday speech.

What is pričajući grammatically, and how is it formed from pričati? Could I also say dok priča priče instead?

Pričajući is the present adverbial participle (glagolski prilog sadašnji). It expresses an action happening at the same time as the main action and often corresponds to English “(by) doing X / while doing X”.

Formation for pričati:

3rd person plural present: oni pričaju
Drop -u: pričaju- → pričaju
Add -ći: pričajući

Function in the sentence:

Ona zna zabaviti goste pričajući priče…
= She knows how to entertain guests *by telling stories… / while telling stories…*

You can often paraphrase:

pričajući priče → dok priča priče (while she tells stories).

So:

Ona zna zabaviti goste dok priča priče… is correct and natural.
pričajući priče is just a more compact, slightly more “written” style.

Why do we say pričajući priče and not just pričajući or pričajući o tome?

The verb pričati normally takes either:

a direct object in the accusative – pričati priču / priče (to tell a story / stories), or
a prepositional phrase – pričati o nečemu (to talk about something).

In the sentence, the focus is on telling stories, so we use a direct object:

pričajući priče (o tome…) – by telling stories (about…).

If you said only pričajući, it would be grammatically unfinished: by telling… what?

pričajući o tome would mean by talking about that, which is a bit vaguer and doesn’t emphasize stories as concrete, narrative things. The original sentence wants specifically stories, hence priče.

In priče o tome što se dogodilo u njihovom djetinjstvu, why do we have o tome što…? How is that different from just priče što se dogodilo?

The structure is:

priče o tome što se dogodilo…
literally: stories about that, what happened… → stories about what happened…

Here:

o
- tom(e): about that
što se dogodilo: what happened

Croatian normally needs the preposition o (“about”) for this meaning.
You cannot say priče što se dogodilo in standard Croatian; it sounds wrong/unfinished.

Correct patterns:

priče o tome što se dogodilo – stories about what happened
priče o onome što se dogodilo – more formal; stories about that which happened

So o tome što… is the natural way to express “about what…”.

How does što se dogodilo work? What is se doing here, and why not što je se dogodilo or što se je dogodilo?

The verb is dogoditi se = to happen. It is a reflexive, impersonal verb:

dogodilo se = it happened / happened (no real subject, just an event)

In što se dogodilo:

što = what (interrogative pronoun, functioning as a kind of “dummy subject”)
se = reflexive particle, part of the verb dogoditi se
dogodilo = past participle, neuter singular (matching the impersonal nature of the verb)

So što se dogodilo literally is “what happened (itself)”.

Forms with je:

In theory, the full past tense is što se je dogodilo, but in modern standard Croatian this sounds archaic or foreign.
The normal, natural form is simply što se dogodilo (without je), especially in questions and impersonal constructions.

So you should learn and use što se dogodilo as the standard pattern.

Why is it u njihovom djetinjstvu and not u njihovo djetinjstvo or u njihovoj djetinjstvu?

This is about case after the preposition “u” and agreement.

Which case?
- u
  - accusative = movement into (into where? into what?)
    - u njihovo djetinjstvo would mean into their childhood (movement towards it).
- u
  - locative = location in (in where? in what?)
    - u njihovom djetinjstvu = in their childhood (within that period).

Here we’re talking about events that happened during (“in”) their childhood, so we need locative, not movement.

Agreement:
- djetinjstvo is neuter singular.
- Neuter singular, locative: u djetinjstvu.
- The possessive pronoun must agree: neuter singular, locative → njihovom.

So:

u njihovom djetinjstvu = in their childhood (correct).
u njihovoj djetinjstvu is wrong agreement (feminine ending -oj on a neuter noun).

Who does njihovom refer to in u njihovom djetinjstvu? To ona or to goste?

Grammatically, njihovom is third person plural (“their”). It must refer to some plural group in the context.

In the sentence:

Ona zna zabaviti goste... – She knows how to entertain guests...

The obvious plural group is gosti (the guests). So njihovom djetinjstvu naturally means “in their childhood” = in the childhood of the guests.

It does not refer to ona (she), because for her it would be u njezinom djetinjstvu (in her childhood).

In čak i kad je tema malo neugodna, what does čak i add? Could we just say kad je tema malo neugodna?

kad je tema malo neugodna = when the topic is a bit uncomfortable
čak i kad je tema malo neugodna = even when the topic is a bit uncomfortable

Čak i intensifies the clause. It adds a sense of surprise or emphasis:
she can entertain guests even in situations where you might expect the opposite, when the topic is slightly uncomfortable.

You can drop čak i and say just kad, but then you lose that nuance of “even when”.

What is the difference between kad and kada? Is one more formal?

Kad and kada are essentially the same word; kada is just the longer form.

kad – shorter, very common in everyday speech and writing
kada – slightly more formal, often used for emphasis or in more careful/edited text

In most contexts, you can freely switch between them:

čak i kad je tema malo neugodna
čak i kada je tema malo neugodna

Both are correct; here kad sounds a bit more casual.

Why is there a comma before čak i kad in the sentence?

The part kad je tema malo neugodna is a subordinate clause of time (“when…”). In Croatian, subordinate clauses introduced by kad/kada, ako, dok, iako, jer, etc. are normally preceded by a comma.

So we have:

Main clause: Ona zna zabaviti goste pričajući priče o tome što se dogodilo u njihovom djetinjstvu
Subordinate clause: čak i kad je tema malo neugodna

The comma separates the main clause from the subordinate one:

…, čak i kad je tema malo neugodna.

In kad je tema malo neugodna, why is it neugodna and not neugodno?

Here, neugodna is an adjective describing tema (feminine noun).

tema – feminine singular
Predicate adjective must agree: neugodna (feminine singular)

Malo here is an adverb meaning a little, slightly and it modifies the adjective neugodna:

malo neugodna = a bit uncomfortable

Neugodno can be:

neuter adjective, or
an adverb meaning uncomfortably, awkwardly

If you said:

kad je malo neugodno – when it’s a bit uncomfortable (impersonal, “it is”)
kad je tema malo neugodno – sounds wrong, because an adverb neugodno doesn’t match the noun tema.

So with tema as the subject, the correct form is neugodna.

What case is goste in zabaviti goste, and why?

Goste is in the accusative plural.

Nominative singular: gost (guest)
Accusative plural: goste

In ona zna zabaviti goste, goste is the direct object of zabaviti – the people she entertains. The verb zabaviti (koga) requires the object in the accusative:

zabaviti djecu – to entertain children
zabaviti publiku – to entertain the audience
zabaviti goste – to entertain guests

Could we change the word order, for example say ona zna pričajući priče zabaviti goste or ona zna zabaviti pričajući priče goste?

Croatian has relatively flexible word order, but not all permutations sound natural.

Original:
- Ona zna zabaviti goste pričajući priče…
  – very natural.
Ona zna pričajući priče zabaviti goste.
- Grammatically possible.
- Emphasis slightly shifts to the method (“she knows how, by telling stories, to entertain guests”).
- Still acceptable, but less straightforward than the original.
Ona zna zabaviti pričajući priče goste.
- This sounds awkward; the object goste is pushed too far to the end after the participial phrase.
- Native speakers would usually avoid this order.

More natural alternatives would be:

Ona zna pričama zabaviti goste. (using pričama = “with stories”)
Ona zna zabaviti goste pričama iz njihova djetinjstva.

So yes, word order is flexible, but the original order is the most natural and clear.

Could we replace u njihovom djetinjstvu with iz njihovog djetinjstva? What would be the difference?

Yes, but the meaning changes slightly:

priče o tome što se dogodilo u njihovom djetinjstvu
= stories about what happened *in their childhood*
(emphasis on events that occurred during that period)
priče iz njihovog djetinjstva
= stories *from their childhood
(emphasis on stories that *originate from that time in life)

Both are natural:

If you want to stress the time/location of the events, use u njihovom djetinjstvu.
If you want to stress that these stories come from that period of life, use iz njihovog djetinjstva.

In many contexts, they overlap and both would be understood similarly.