Learn Hardcore Croatian: Da sam znala da ona volontira u tom azilu, posjetila bih je prošlog mjeseca. - If I had known that she was volunteering in that shelter, I would have visited her last month.

First da – conditional “if”
- Da sam znala … ≈ If I had known …
  In this structure, da + auxiliary biti (sam/si/je/…) + past participle is a very common way to express an unreal condition in the past.
Second da – “that” after “know”
- … znala da ona volontira u tom azilu ≈ knew that she volunteers in that shelter
  Here da is the usual conjunction meaning that, introducing a clause after verbs like znati (to know), misliti (to think), reći (to say), etc.

So the literal structure is: If I had known that she volunteers in that shelter, I would have visited her last month.

Why is it Da sam znala and not Ako sam znala?

Da sam znala is the standard way to introduce an unreal / counterfactual condition in the past:

Da sam znala, posjetila bih je …
= I didn’t know, but I’m imagining that I had.

Ako is usually used for real or open conditions, especially with present or future:

Ako znam, reći ću ti. – If I know, I’ll tell you.
Ako budem znao, reći ću ti. – If I happen to know, I’ll tell you.

Ako sam znala would sound like “If I did know (and maybe I did, maybe I didn’t)…” – it doesn’t carry the clear “this didn’t happen” feeling that da sam znala has here, so it’s not the natural choice.

What tense is sam znala, and how is it formed?

Sam znala is the perfect tense (perfekt):

Form: present of biti (to be) + past participle (L‑participle)
- ja sam znala / znao
- ti si znala / znao
- ona/on je znala / znao
  etc.

In this da‑clause (da sam znala), the perfect is used with a conditional meaning and translates naturally as had known in English, even though Croatian doesn’t use a separate “had” form here.

(A “true” pluperfect exists: bila sam znala, but it’s rare in everyday speech.)

Why are znala and posjetila feminine forms? How would a man say this sentence?

In Croatian, the past participle agrees with the subject in gender and number.

znala, posjetila → feminine singular
znao, posjetio → masculine singular

The sentence as given assumes a female speaker:

Da sam znala da ona volontira u tom azilu, posjetila bih je prošlog mjeseca.

A male speaker would say:

Da sam znao da ona volontira u tom azilu, posjetio bih je prošlog mjeseca.

Plural examples:

Mi bismo znali / znale
Mi bismo posjetili / posjetile
(masculine‑mixed vs all‑female groups)

How is the conditional posjetila bih je formed, and what is the difference between bih and bi?

Posjetila bih je is the (present) conditional:

Form: particle bih/bi/bismo/biste/bi + past participle

Paradigm (with a feminine participle posjetila for clarity):

ja bih posjetila
ti bi posjetila
on/ona/ono bi posjetio / posjetila / posjetilo
mi bismo posjetili / posjetile
vi biste posjetili / posjetile
oni/one/ona bi posjetili / posjetile / posjetila

So:

bih = 1st person singular only (“I would”)
bi = 2nd and 3rd person singular, and 3rd person plural (“you/he/she/they would”)

In our sentence, posjetila bih je = I would have visited her (in this specific past context).

Could I say Bih je posjetila or Bih posjetila je? Where do bih and je normally go?

No, Bih je posjetila and Bih posjetila je are wrong.

Both bih and je are clitics (unstressed little words), and Croatian has fairly strict rules for where they go:

Clitics usually go in the second position in a clause, right after the first stressed word or phrase.
They form a fixed cluster where the order of clitics is also constrained.

In your sentence, the normal options are:

Posjetila bih je prošlog mjeseca.
Ja bih je posjetila prošlog mjeseca.
Prošlog mjeseca bih je posjetila.

But bih cannot normally start the clause by itself; something stressed (like ja, posjetila, or prošlog mjeseca) should come first.

Also, bih and je should stay together in the clitic cluster:

✅ posjetila bih je
❌ posjetila je bih

Why is it je and not nju or joj for “her”?

All of these are forms of “she/her”, but they differ in case and usage:

je – unstressed accusative clitic = “her” as a direct object
- posjetila bih je – I would (have) visited her.
nju – stressed accusative form, used for emphasis or after prepositions
- Posjetila bih nju, ne njega. – I would have visited her, not him.
- za nju, na nju, etc.
joj – unstressed dative clitic = “to/for her”
- Pomogla bih joj. – I would (have) helped her.

The verb posjetiti takes a direct object in the accusative, so the neutral, non‑emphatic form is the clitic je.

Why is ona included? Could I just say da volontira u tom azilu?

Yes, you can drop ona:

… da ona volontira u tom azilu
… da volontira u tom azilu

Croatian is a pro‑drop language: subject pronouns are often omitted because the verb form already tells you the person/number. Here:

volontira is 3rd person singular, so it could mean he/she/it volunteers.

Using ona adds emphasis or clarity, for example:

to stress that it’s she (not someone else) who volunteers there, or
to remove possible ambiguity if context is not clear.

So both are grammatically correct; ona is more explicit/contrastive.

Why is volontira in the present tense, when in English we might say “volunteered” here?

In Croatian, volontira is simple present tense: she volunteers / she is volunteering.

In this kind of hypothetical sentence, Croatian often keeps the tense of the embedded fact as it really is (or was), rather than shifting it just because the main clause is hypothetical.

Here:

da ona volontira u tom azilu
suggests a habitual or current fact: she (generally) volunteers there, probably still.

If you said:

da je ona volontirala u tom azilu
that would suggest she used to volunteer there (in the past), not necessarily now.

English tends to shift the tense in reported or hypothetical clauses (knew that she volunteered), but Croatian is freer to keep the present if the activity is seen as an ongoing or general fact.

What case is u tom azilu, and how would the meaning change if it were u taj azil?

U tom azilu uses the locative case:

Preposition u
- locative = location (where something is / happens).
  - u tom azilu – in that shelter (static location)

Forms:

taj azil – nominative / accusative
tom azilu – locative

If you said u taj azil, you’d be using u + accusative, which normally expresses motion towards:

Idem u taj azil. – I’m going to that shelter.

But with volontirati (to volunteer), you want a place where the volunteering happens, not a destination you are moving into, so u tom azilu (locative) is the natural choice.

Why is it prošlog mjeseca and not prošli mjesec here?

Both prošlog mjeseca and prošli mjesec are used in Croatian, but they’re in different cases:

prošlog mjeseca – genitive
prošli mjesec – nominative/accusative (they look the same for masculine inanimate nouns)

Both can function as time expressions (“last month”). In your sentence:

posjetila bih je prošlog mjeseca
uses the very common genitive of time, similar to svakog dana (every day), jednog dana (one day), etc.

You could also say:

posjetila bih je prošli mjesec

That’s not wrong; it just sounds a bit less idiomatic in this exact slot. You’ll see both patterns in real language, especially in speech:

Prošli mjesec sam je vidjela.
Prošlog mjeseca sam je vidjela.

What is the difference between the original sentence and Znala sam da ona volontira u tom azilu; posjetila sam je prošlog mjeseca?

Original:

Da sam znala da ona volontira u tom azilu, posjetila bih je prošlog mjeseca.
→ I didn’t know, and as a result I didn’t visit her. This is an unreal, hypothetical past (“If I had known…”).

Changed version:

Znala sam da ona volontira u tom azilu; posjetila sam je prošlog mjeseca.
→ I knew, and I (in fact) visited her last month. This is a real, factual statement, not hypothetical.

So:

Original = regret / counterfactual: different reality from what actually happened.
Changed = simple narrative of what really happened.

Why is there a comma after Da sam znala da ona volontira u tom azilu?

In Croatian punctuation:

When a subordinate clause (introduced by da, ako, kad, etc.) comes before the main clause, it is normally followed by a comma.

So:

Da sam znala da ona volontira u tom azilu, posjetila bih je prošlog mjeseca.
[subordinate clause] , [main clause]

If you reverse the order:

Posjetila bih je prošlog mjeseca da sam znala da ona volontira u tom azilu.

then the comma is usually omitted in this particular conditional construction.