Breakdown of Jutros sam se probudio umoran.
Questions & Answers about Jutros sam se probudio umoran.
jutros = this morning (refers to today’s morning; adverb)
- Jutros sam se probudio umoran. = This morning I woke up tired.
jutro = (the) morning (a noun)
- Jutro je bilo hladno. = The morning was cold.
ujutro = in the morning / in the mornings (general time, not necessarily today)
- Ujutro pijem kavu. = I drink coffee in the morning / in the mornings.
You normally do not say "ovo jutro" for “this morning” in standard Croatian; you use jutros instead.
The subject “I” is implied by the verb form, so it’s usually dropped.
- sam = I am / I have (as an auxiliary verb here)
- The form sam already tells you the subject is first person singular (ja = I), so saying ja is optional.
You could say:
- Ja sam se jutros probudio umoran.
but in everyday speech it’s more natural and less redundant to just say:
- Jutros sam se probudio umoran.
There are actually two different words spelled sam:
In this sentence, sam is the auxiliary verb:
- It’s the 1st person singular present of biti (to be), used to form the past tense.
- Here it corresponds roughly to English “have” in “I have woken up”.
Pattern:
- Ja sam se probudio… = I (have) woken up…
- Ti si se probudio… = You (have) woken up…
- On je se / se je probudio… (standard: On se je probudio…) = He (has) woken up…
A different word sam means “alone” (an adjective):
- Ostao sam sam. = I stayed alone.
In Jutros sam se probudio umoran, sam is only the auxiliary verb, not “alone”.
se is a reflexive pronoun. It’s used here because the verb is probuditi se = to wake up (oneself).
probuditi (without se) = to wake someone up (transitive)
- Probudila je djecu. = She woke the children.
probuditi se = to wake up (intransitive, subject wakes up)
- Probudila se u šest. = She woke up at six.
So:
- Jutros sam probudio djecu. = This morning I woke (up) the children.
- Jutros sam se probudio. = This morning I woke up (myself / I woke up).
Leaving out se completely changes the meaning or makes the sentence sound wrong.
Croatian has strict rules about the position of clitics (short unstressed words like sam, se, mi, ga, je).
Key points:
- Clitics generally go in the second position in the sentence or clause.
- Among themselves they follow a fixed internal order. In that order, sam comes before se.
So:
- Jutros (first stressed word) → then the clitic cluster sam se → then the main verb:
- Jutros sam se probudio umoran.
You cannot say:
- Jutros se sam probudio. ❌ (unnatural / incorrect in standard Croatian)
You can, however, sometimes move the verb in front:
- Jutros sam se *probudio umoran.*
- Jutros sam se umoran probudio would sound wrong; the adjective normally follows biti (to be) or stays in the predicate position, not squeezed between se and the verb like that.
probudio is the past participle (also called the l-participle) of probuditi se and it agrees with the subject’s gender and number.
Masculine singular:
- Ja sam se probudio. = I (male) woke up.
Feminine singular:
- Ja sam se probudila. = I (female) woke up.
Neuter singular (for neuter subjects, not for people):
- Dijete se probudilo. = The child woke up.
Masculine plural:
- Mi smo se probudili. = We (group of men or mixed group) woke up.
Feminine plural:
- Mi smo se probudile. = We (all women) woke up.
So -o here marks masculine singular for verbs of this type: probudio, rekao, vidio, čuo, etc.
Two elements would change to feminine forms:
The past participle:
- probudila instead of probudio
The adjective umoran:
- umorna instead of umoran
So a woman would say:
- Jutros sam se probudila umorna.
= This morning I woke up tired (spoken by a female).
Everything else (jutros, sam, se) stays the same.
umoran is an adjective meaning tired. In Croatian:
- Predicative adjectives (like in I am tired) agree with the subject in gender and number.
Here, the understood subject is ja (I), and we imagine a male speaker, so we use masculine singular:
- umoran = tired (masculine singular)
- umorna = tired (feminine singular)
- umorno = tired (neuter singular)
- umorni / umorne / umorna = plural forms (depending on gender)
Examples:
- Ja sam umoran. (male) = I am tired.
- Ja sam umorna. (female) = I am tired.
The position:
- It’s very natural in Croatian to put a short, “light” word like an adjective at the end of a simple sentence:
- Jutros sam se probudio umoran. (most natural)
- Umoran sam se jutros probudio. (possible, with emphasis on umoran)
Word order is flexible, but Jutros sam se probudio umoran is the neutral, default way to say it.
Yes, you can, but there is a slight difference in focus:
Jutros sam se probudio umoran.
Focuses on the moment of waking up: “When I woke up this morning, I was tired.”Jutros sam bio umoran kad sam se probudio.
Literally: “This morning I was tired when I woke up.”
This more explicitly states the state (being tired) and links it to the time — still very similar in meaning, just a bit more wordy.
In everyday conversation, Jutros sam se probudio umoran is shorter and more natural.
You can move jutros, but you must still respect the second-position rule for clitics.
Correct options:
- Jutros sam se probudio umoran. (most natural)
- Ja sam se jutros probudio umoran. (emphasis on I)
- Umoran sam se jutros probudio. (emphasis on umoran)
Incorrect / unnatural:
- Sam se jutros probudio umoran. ❌
- A clause cannot start with a clitic like sam; it needs a stressed word before it.
So yes, jutros can move, but clitics (sam, se) must always have something stressed in front of them.
sam se probudio is the perfect tense (Croatian perfekt).
It’s made of:
- the present tense of biti (to be) → sam, si, je, smo, ste, su
- plus the past participle → probudio / probudila / probudili, etc.
This tense usually corresponds to:
- English simple past (I woke up), or
- English present perfect (I have woken up),
depending on context. In everyday Croatian, perfekt is the main past tense people use in speech.
So:
- Jutros sam se probudio umoran. ≈ This morning I woke up tired.
In the meaning “to wake up (oneself)”, probuditi se is always reflexive, so you must use se (or si se, sam se, je se, etc., depending on person and tense).
If you drop se, the verb becomes transitive and means “to wake someone up”:
- Probudila sam ga. = I woke him up.
- Probudila sam djecu. = I woke the children.
So:
- Jutros sam se probudio umoran. ✅ = I woke up tired.
- Jutros sam probudio umoran. ❌ = ungrammatical / incomplete (it sounds like “This morning I woke (someone) tired” without saying whom and is just wrong here).
Therefore: in your sentence, you cannot omit "se".