Rekli su mi da je bankomat opet radio navečer, pa sam mogla podići barem malo gotovine.

In Croatian, 3rd person plural is often used with an unspecified subject, much like English they in They told me... or even I was told... when who said it is not important.

So Rekli su mi literally means They told me / I was told.

• rekli = past participle, masculine plural
• su = are, used here as the auxiliary for the past tense
• mi = to me

If the group were known to be all female, you could also get Rekle su mi.

Because the verb reći takes an indirect object in the dative: reći nekome = to tell someone.

So:

• mi = short dative form of ja = to me
• meni = full dative form, usually used for emphasis or contrast
• mene = accusative/genitive form, so it would be wrong here

Compare:

• Rekli su mi. = They told me.
• Meni su rekli. = They told me with extra emphasis on me

Da introduces a subordinate clause and here it means that.

So:

• Rekli su mi da... = They told me that...

This is extremely common after verbs of saying, thinking, knowing, hearing, and similar verbs.

This is mostly about clitic word order.

The auxiliary je is a clitic, and Croatian clitics usually go very early in the clause, typically in second position. After da, it is natural to put je immediately after it:

• da je bankomat opet radio

not normally:

• da bankomat je opet radio

This clause also uses the past tense:

• je = auxiliary
• radio = past participle of raditi

So the structure is basically that the ATM was working / functioning.

It is something else here.

In this sentence, radio is the masculine singular past participle of raditi = to work / function.

So bankomat je radio means the ATM was working or the ATM was functioning.

It just happens to be spelled the same as the noun radio. The context tells you which one it is.

Because the subject is bankomat, and bankomat is masculine singular.

In Croatian past tense, the participle agrees with the subject in gender and number:

• masculine singular: radio
• feminine singular: radila
• neuter singular: radilo
• masculine plural: radili
• feminine plural: radile

So:

• bankomat je radio = the ATM was working

If the subject were banka for example, you would get je radila.

Opet means again.

Here it suggests that the ATM had not been working before, but then it was working again.

So:

• bankomat je opet radio = the ATM was working again

A very close synonym is ponovno, though opet is often more common in everyday speech.

Navečer means in the evening.

It is an adverb, so you use it by itself, without a preposition.

In this sentence:

• radio navečer = was working in the evening

It is different from večeras, which usually means tonight / this evening from the speaker’s present point of view.

A near-synonym is uvečer.

Here pa means something like so, and so, or as a result.

It links the second clause to the first as a consequence:

• The ATM was working again in the evening,
• so I could withdraw at least some cash.

In other contexts, pa can also mean something closer to and then, depending on the sentence.

Sam is the 1st person singular auxiliary used to form the past tense, and it is a clitic. Croatian clitics usually come near the beginning of the clause, so after pa you naturally get:

• pa sam mogla

rather than something like:

• pa ja sam mogla

The subject pronoun ja is normally omitted because Croatian often drops subject pronouns when they are clear from the verb form and the context.

So pa sam mogla simply means so I could / so I was able to.

Because Croatian past participles agree with the subject in gender.

Here the omitted subject is I, and the form is:

• mogla = feminine singular

So the speaker is female.

A male speaker would say:

• pa sam mogao podići...

This is one of the things Croatian often tells you explicitly that English does not.

Literally, podići can mean to raise or to lift, but with novac or gotovina it very commonly means to withdraw money/cash.

So:

• podići gotovinu
• podići novac

both mean to withdraw cash/money

This is the normal verb you would use for taking money out of an ATM.

It is also a perfective verb, which fits a single completed action such as one withdrawal. The imperfective partner is often podizati.

Because malo is a quantity word, and after quantity words Croatian normally uses the genitive.

So:

• malo gotovine = a little cash

not:

• malo gotovina

Here:

• barem = at least
• malo = a little
• gotovine = genitive singular of gotovina = cash

Since gotovina is a mass noun, the genitive singular is natural here.

Also, barem has a close shorter synonym: bar. So bar malo gotovine would mean almost the same thing.