Beba spava u sobi.

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Breakdown of Beba spava u sobi.

• spavati: to sleep
• soba: room
• beba: baby

Questions & Answers about Beba spava u sobi.

Why doesn’t the sentence use a word for “the” or “a”, like in English?

Croatian has no articles like “the” or “a/an”.
So beba can mean “a baby” or “the baby” depending on context, and soba/sobi can mean “a room” or “the room”.

Context (what’s been said before, what both speakers know) tells you whether it should be understood as a or the in English.

Why is it spava and not spavati?

Spavati is the infinitive form, meaning “to sleep”.

In a normal present-tense sentence with a subject, you must conjugate the verb:

• (ja) spavam – I sleep / I am sleeping
• (ti) spavaš – you sleep
• (on/ona/ono) spava – he/she/it sleeps
• (mi) spavamo – we sleep
• (vi) spavate – you (plural/formal) sleep
• (oni/one/ona) spavaju – they sleep

Here, the subject beba is third person singular, so the verb must be spava.

Why is there no word for “is” like in “The baby is sleeping”?