Breakdown of Vikendom pokušavam iskoristiti svaki miran trenutak za čitanje, jer mi je kvaliteta odmora važnija od količine posla.
Questions & Answers about Vikendom pokušavam iskoristiti svaki miran trenutak za čitanje, jer mi je kvaliteta odmora važnija od količine posla.
Vikendom is the instrumental singular of vikend, used adverbially.
- Literal idea: vikendom ≈ “(during) the weekend / on weekends”.
- Function: it answers when? and behaves like an adverb of time.
Compare:
- Vikendom čitam. – I read on weekends / at weekends (in general, habitually).
- Za vikend čitam. – I read on/for the weekend (often more like “this coming weekend” or a specific one, depending on context).
Using just vikend without a preposition or case ending would be ungrammatical here. You need either:
- Vikendom… (instrumental as an adverb),
- or Za vikend…, Preko vikenda…, etc., with a preposition.
In Croatian, verbs like pokušati / pokušavati (to try) are normally followed by an infinitive verb, not by a subordinate clause:
- pokušavam iskoristiti – I try to make use of…
- pokušat ću učiti – I will try to study.
Using da + finite verb (pokušavam da iskoristim) is not standard Croatian; it’s characteristic of some neighboring varieties (e.g. Serbian). In standard Croatian you should say:
- pokušavam iskoristiti svaki miran trenutak
not - ✗ pokušavam iskoristim svaki miran trenutak
- ✗ pokušavam da iskoristim svaki miran trenutak
Aspect is the key difference:
- koristiti – imperfective: to use (ongoing, habitual, no clear endpoint).
- iskoristiti – perfective: to make full use of / to use up / to take advantage of completely (focus on a completed result).
In pokušavam iskoristiti svaki miran trenutak:
- pokušavam (imperfective) expresses ongoing effort or habit: I (usually) try.
- iskoristiti (perfective infinitive) expresses the goal as a complete action: to squeeze the most out of each quiet moment.
You could say pokušavam koristiti svaki miran trenutak, but it’s slightly weaker: more like I try to use every quiet moment, without the nuance of “really making the most of it / not wasting it.” The original with iskoristiti suggests maximum, efficient use of each quiet moment.
trenutak is a masculine noun. In this sentence, it is the direct object of iskoristiti, so it’s in the accusative singular.
For masculine inanimate nouns, nominative and accusative singular often look the same:
- Nominative: trenutak – moment
- Accusative: trenutak – moment (same form here)
The modifiers must agree with trenutak in gender, number, and case:
- svaki – masculine singular accusative of svaki (every)
- miran – masculine singular accusative of miran (quiet)
So you get:
- svaki miran trenutak – every quiet moment (masc. sg. acc.)
If the noun were feminine or plural, everything would change accordingly, e.g.:
- svaku mirnu minutu – every quiet minute (fem. sg. acc.)
- svake mirne trenutke – every quiet moment (plural; colloquial style)
Čitanje is a verbal noun (a gerund-like noun), derived from čitati (to read). Here it’s a regular noun in the accusative singular after the preposition za:
- za čitanje – for reading (literally “for the reading”).
Grammatically:
- za normally requires the accusative
- čitanje (neuter noun) has the same form in nominative and accusative singular
So:
- Nominative: čitanje – reading (as a thing/activity)
- Accusative: čitanje – reading (after za)
You could say … trenutak za čitati, but za + verbal noun (za čitanje) is much more natural and idiomatic when expressing purpose like “a moment for reading / a time for reading.” It sounds like you are treating the activity as a noun (“reading”) rather than an action (“to read”).
Mi is the dative form of ja (I), used here as an indirect/ethical dative: it expresses “to me / for me” in a personal, slightly emotional way:
- jer mi je kvaliteta odmora važnija…
≈ because the quality of rest is more important to me…
Subtleties:
- jer je kvaliteta odmora važnija… – grammatically fine, but neutral, no “to me” nuance.
- jer je kvaliteta mog odmora važnija… – because the quality of my rest is more important… (focus on whose rest it is, not on whose preference it is).
With mi, you highlight your personal evaluation:
- mi je važna / važnija – is important / more important to me
This dative of interest (“to me”) is extremely common in Croatian:
- Meni je to važno. – That is important to me.
- Nije mi bitno. – It’s not important to me.
You cannot say jer je mi…. Croatian has strict rules about clitics (short unstressed words like mi, je, ga, se).
Key rule: clitics tend to go in second position in the clause.
In jer mi je kvaliteta odmora važnija…:
- Clause introduced by jer.
- The first “position” is jer.
- Right after that, you place the clitic group: mi je.
- Then comes the rest: kvaliteta odmora važnija od količine posla.
So the usual pattern is:
- Jer mi je [rest of the sentence] – correct
- ✗ Jer je mi [rest] – wrong order of clitics
You can move some content around, but the clitics must maintain their proper order and stay near the beginning, for example:
- Jer mi je važnija kvaliteta odmora od količine posla. – also correct (just a different emphasis).
Both odmora and količine posla are in the genitive.
kvaliteta odmora
- kvaliteta – nominative singular (subject): quality
- odmora – genitive singular of odmor: of rest
This is a typical “noun + of-noun” structure:
- kvaliteta odmora – the quality of (the) rest
Croatian uses the genitive (odmora) for this “of” relationship.
važnija od količine posla
- važnija – comparative form of važna (more important)
- od – preposition meaning from / than in comparisons
- količine – genitive singular of količina: of quantity
- posla – genitive singular of posao: of work
After od in a comparison, Croatian requires the genitive:
- važnija od količine posla – more important than the amount of work
And količine posla itself is a genitive–genitive noun phrase:
- količina posla – amount of work
- Genitive: količine posla – of the amount of work (because od requires genitive).
Both od and nego can appear in comparisons, but they are used in slightly different ways.
In this sentence:
- važnija od količine posla is the standard pattern:
- comparative adjective (važnija)
- od
- noun in the genitive (količine posla)
General tendencies:
od
- genitive
Used very widely after comparatives, especially before nouns:
- važniji od mene – more important than me
- stariji od brata – older than (my) brother
- bolje od jučer – better than yesterday
- genitive
nego often appears:
- after negation:
- Nije veći nego manji. – He is not bigger but smaller.
- before a pronoun or whole clause, or to contrast alternatives more sharply:
- Radije ću odmarati nego raditi. – I’d rather rest than work.
- Bolje je čitati nego gledati TV. – It’s better to read than to watch TV.
- after negation:
You could say važnija nego količina posla, and people would understand it, but with a simple noun phrase like this, od + genitive is the most neutral and idiomatic choice.
Yes, you can reorder parts of the second clause:
- … jer mi je kvaliteta odmora važnija od količine posla.
- … jer mi je važnija kvaliteta odmora od količine posla.
Both are grammatically correct and mean essentially the same:
“… because the quality of rest is more important to me than the amount of work.”
The difference is in emphasis:
- kvaliteta odmora važnija…
– slightly more neutral; “the quality of rest” is the clear subject at the start. - važnija kvaliteta odmora…
– puts a bit more stress on the word važnija (“more important”) right after je, so you feel the comparison more strongly.
Croatian word order is relatively flexible, but you must keep:
- clitics in the proper “second position” (mi je), and
- case endings the same, regardless of order.