Breakdown of Tijekom dugog turnira kratko sjedimo u svlačionici da bismo se odmorili između poluvremena.
Questions & Answers about Tijekom dugog turnira kratko sjedimo u svlačionici da bismo se odmorili između poluvremena.
Tijekom means “during” and it always takes the genitive case. That is why you see:
- tijekom dugog turnira
- dugog = genitive masculine singular of dug
- turnira = genitive masculine singular of turnir
You could also say:
- za vrijeme dugog turnira – literally “for the time of the long tournament”, very close in meaning to tijekom
- dok traje dugi turnir – “while the long tournament is going on”
So:
- Tijekom dugog turnira… = During the long tournament…
- Za vrijeme dugog turnira… = During the long tournament…
- Dok traje dugi turnir… = While the long tournament is going on…
All are natural, but tijekom + genitive is the most compact and neutral here.
Because tijekom requires the genitive case.
- Nominative (dictionary form): dugi turnir – “(the) long tournament”
- Genitive: dugog turnira
Breakdown:
- turnir (m.)
- Nominative sg: turnir
- Genitive sg: turnira
- dug (long)
- Nominative m. sg: dugi
- Genitive m. sg: dugog
So tijekom forces dugog turnira, not dugi turnir.
In Croatian, prepositions like tijekom, zbog, bez automatically change the case of the following noun phrase.
Yes, Croatian word order is relatively flexible. Your version is grammatically fine:
- Tijekom dugog turnira kratko sjedimo u svlačionici…
- Kratko sjedimo u svlačionici tijekom dugog turnira…
The usual tendencies:
- Time expressions (like tijekom dugog turnira) often come at the beginning.
- The default verb position is fairly early in the clause.
- Adverbs like kratko can appear before or after the verb:
- kratko sjedimo
- sjedimo kratko
Placing tijekom dugog turnira at the beginning slightly emphasizes the time frame (“As for during the long tournament, we briefly sit…”), but the core meaning is the same.
Kratko here is an adverb modifying sjedimo, so it means “briefly / for a short time”:
- kratko sjedimo = we sit briefly / we sit for a short time
About nuances:
- kratko – simply “shortly / briefly,” fairly neutral:
- Kratko sjedimo u svlačionici. – We sit in the locker room for a short time.
- nakratko – “for a little while / for a moment,” often has a slightly more “for just a bit” feeling:
- Nakratko sjedimo u svlačionici. – We sit in the locker room for a little while.
Both are possible in this sentence; kratko is slightly more neutral and direct.
Sjedimo is the present tense, 1st person plural of sjediti (imperfective verb) – “to sit (be sitting)”.
- sjediti (imperfective) – focuses on the state or duration of sitting.
- sjesti (perfective) – focuses on the act of sitting down (the moment you go from standing to sitting).
So:
- kratko sjedimo = we are (for a short time) in the state of sitting
- kratko sjednemo would mean something like “we sit down briefly (once),” focusing on the action of sitting down rather than the period spent sitting.
In this context, you want to emphasize that during the long tournament you spend a short time sitting in the locker room to rest, so the ongoing state sjedimo is the natural choice.
The preposition u can take either:
- Accusative = motion into something
- Locative = position in something
Here you are talking about where you sit (location), not where you go, so you use locative:
- u svlačionici – “in the locker room” (location)
- u svlačionicu – “into the locker room” (movement)
Examples:
- Idemo u svlačionicu. – We are going into the locker room. (accusative)
- Sjedimo u svlačionici. – We are sitting in the locker room. (locative)
Da bismo se odmorili roughly means “in order for us to rest / so that we can rest.”
Grammatically:
- da – introduces a subordinate clause, often of purpose or result
- bismo – 1st person plural conditional auxiliary (from biti, “to be”)
- se – reflexive clitic
- odmorili – past (l-participle) of odmoriti (se), perfective “to rest, to take a rest”
Together this is a purpose clause in the conditional mood:
- da bismo se odmorili = (literally) “so that we would have rested / so that we would rest”
In English, it corresponds to “so that we can rest” or “in order to rest.”
This structure is very common in written and standard Croatian to express purpose politely or slightly formally.
Both can translate as “so that we (can) rest / in order to rest,” but there is a nuance:
da bismo se odmorili
- Uses the conditional (bismo + l-participle).
- Often sounds a bit more formal, careful, or polite.
- Common in writing and in more careful speech.
da se odmorimo
- Uses present tense (subjunctive-like use of the present).
- Slightly more neutral and conversational.
- Very frequent in everyday speech.
In your sentence you could say either:
- …kratko sjedimo u svlačionici da bismo se odmorili…
- …kratko sjedimo u svlačionici da se odmorimo…
Both are correct; the first sounds a bit more “textbook” or formal.
Odmoriti se is a reflexive verb meaning “to rest (oneself), to take a rest.”
- odmoriti se – to rest
- odmoriti (without se) – “to let something rest” or “to rest (something else)” – rarely used in everyday speech this way.
So:
- da bismo se odmorili – so that we (ourselves) rest
- da bismo odmorili – would usually sound incomplete or suggest resting something (an object), which is not what you mean.
That is why the reflexive pronoun se is necessary here.
Croatian has a strong rule about clitics (short unstressed words like se, mi, ti, ga, je, bi, bismo): they tend to appear early in the clause, usually in second position.
In the clause da bismo se odmorili:
- da – first word (introduces the clause)
- bismo se – clitics come right after the first stressed element
- odmorili – main verb
So the “clitic cluster” bismo se is correctly placed near the beginning of the clause.
*da bismo odmorili se sounds wrong because se is pushed too far back instead of staying with the other clitics in their usual early position.
Između means “between” and it takes the genitive case.
The noun poluvrijeme (neuter, “half-time / half (of a match)”) has:
- Nominative sg: poluvrijeme
- Genitive sg: poluvremena
So:
- između poluvremena = “between halves” / “between the halves (of the game)”
Here poluvremena is in the genitive because of the preposition između.
Semantically, you are talking about the time between the two halves of the game.
For neuter nouns like poluvrijeme, some forms are ambiguous:
- Nominative sg: poluvrijeme
- Genitive sg: poluvremena
- Nominative pl: poluvremena
- Genitive pl: also poluvremena in practice
So poluvremena can be:
- genitive singular,
- or plural (various cases),
depending on context.
With između, we know the case must be genitive, but we don’t clearly see from form alone whether it is genitive singular or plural. Semantically though, in sports:
- između poluvremena is naturally understood as “between the (two) halves” → effectively plural in meaning.
Croatian often relies on context to disambiguate these neuter forms.
Croatian has no articles (no equivalent of English a/an or the). Definiteness and specificity are expressed by:
- context:
- tijekom dugog turnira – by context, we know which tournament we are talking about
- adjectives: adding dugog (“long”) already narrows and specifies turnira
- word order and stress, if needed
So:
- tijekom dugog turnira can mean “during a long tournament” or “during the long tournament,” depending on context.
- u svlačionici can mean “in a locker room” or “in the locker room,” again from context.
Learners simply have to get used to the fact that Croatian omits articles completely; the listener infers a/the from situation and surrounding information.