Svaki korak nam pomaže.

Every step helps us.

Breakdown of Svaki korak nam pomaže.

• svaki: every
• nam: us
• pomagati: to help
• korak: step

Questions & Answers about Svaki korak nam pomaže.

What does Svaki korak nam pomaže literally mean, word by word?

Literally:

• svaki = every / each
• korak = step
• nam = to us (dative of mi, “we”)
• pomaže = helps (3rd person singular, present tense, from pomagati “to help”)

So the structure is literally: Every step to-us helps.
Natural English: Every step helps us.

What case are svaki and korak in, and why?

Both svaki and korak are in the nominative singular masculine:

• korak is the subject of the sentence (“step”), so it’s nominative.
• svaki agrees with korak in gender, number, and case, so it’s also nominative singular masculine.

Nominative is used for the subject, which is “every step” here.

Why is it svaki, not svakog or svakom?

Because svaki is in the nominative, used for the subject.

• svaki – nominative singular masculine (subject: “every step helps”)
• svakog – genitive/accusative singular masculine (e.g. bojim se svakog koraka – “I’m afraid of every step”)
• svakom – dative/locative singular masculine (e.g. radujem se svakom koraku – “I’m happy about every step”)

Here the phrase “every step” is the doer of the action (“helps”), so it stays in nominative: svaki korak.

What is nam, and why isn’t it nas?

nam is the dative plural of the pronoun mi (“we”):

• mi – we (nominative)
• nas – of us / us (genitive or accusative)
• nam – to us / for us (dative)

The verb pomaže (“helps”) in Croatian takes an indirect object in the dative, not a direct object in the accusative.
So you say:

• pomaže nam = helps to us → “helps us”
• pomaže nas would be wrong in standard Croatian.

Why is there no preposition like “to” before nam, as in “to us”?

Croatian doesn’t need a preposition here because the dative case (the form nam) already expresses the meaning “to us” on its own.

In English you say:

• “helps us” (no “to”), or sometimes “is helpful to us”.

In Croatian, pomaže normally takes a bare dative:

• pomaže nam – (he/she/it) helps us
• pomaže im – (he/she/it) helps them

No preposition like *pomaže do nas or *pomaže prema nama is used in this sense.

Where can nam go in the sentence? Is Svaki korak pomaže nam correct?

nam is a clitic (short unstressed pronoun), and Croatian normally places clitics in the second position in the clause.

Most neutral options:

• Svaki korak nam pomaže. (most common, fully natural)
• Svaki nam korak pomaže. (also correct, a bit more emphatic on “to us”)

Less natural / marked:

• Nam svaki korak pomaže. – possible, but very emphatic/stylistically marked (e.g. in poetry or special emphasis).

Svaki korak pomaže nam. is not standard word order in neutral speech because nam is pushed too far to the end; speakers strongly prefer it in second position.

What verb is pomaže, and how is it conjugated?

pomaže is the 3rd person singular, present tense of the verb pomagati (“to help”, imperfective).

Partial present-tense conjugation:

• (ja) pomažem – I help
• (ti) pomažeš – you help (singular)
• (on/ona/ono) pomaže – he/she/it helps
• (mi) pomažemo – we help
• (vi) pomažete – you help (plural / formal)
• (oni/one/ona) pomažu – they help

It agrees with svaki korak (3rd person singular):
Svaki korak (on) → pomaže.

What’s the difference between pomagati and pomoći?

They are an aspect pair:

• pomagati – imperfective (ongoing, repeated, or general help)
• pomoći – perfective (a single completed act of helping)

In Svaki korak nam pomaže, the idea is general / repeated: every step (repeatedly, habitually) helps us.

Compare:

• Svaki korak nam pomaže. – Every step helps us (in general).
• Taj je korak mnogo pomogao. – That step helped a lot (one completed event, perfective pomoći).

Can I drop nam and just say Svaki korak pomaže?

Yes, grammatically you can say:

• Svaki korak pomaže. – Every step helps.

But then you lose the information “us”. The sentence becomes more general: “Every step helps (in general)” without saying whom it helps.

If you specifically want “helps us”, you need nam.

How would I say “All the steps help us” instead of “Every step helps us”?

You would change the subject to plural:

• Svi koraci nam pomažu. – All the steps help us.

Differences:

• Svaki korak nam pomaže. – focuses on each individual step as helpful.
• Svi koraci nam pomažu. – focuses on the group as a whole (“all the steps”).

Note the verb in plural now: pomažu (they help).

Why doesn’t Croatian use an article like “the” or “a” before korak?

Croatian has no articles (no “a/an/the”).
The word korak by itself can correspond to:

• “a step”
• “the step”
• “step” (in a generic sense)

Here, Svaki korak = “every step” / “each step” without needing an article. The meaning is clear from svaki, not from any article.

Is the present tense pomaže here more like English “helps” or “is helping”?

In this context, pomaže expresses a general truth / habitual action, so it’s equivalent to English “helps”:

• Svaki korak nam pomaže. – Every step helps us.

If the context were clearly about a current, ongoing process, it could also correspond to “is helping us”, but the default reading here is general/habitual rather than strictly “right now”.