Sastanak je petnaestog srpnja.

Croatian usually does not use a separate word like English on before a date.

So English says:

• The meeting is on July 15th.

Croatian naturally says:

• Sastanak je petnaestog srpnja.

The date itself, in the genitive case, carries that meaning. So this is a very normal Croatian pattern.

Je means is.

It is the 3rd person singular present-tense form of the verb biti = to be.

So:

• sastanak = meeting
• je = is

This is the same je you see in many basic Croatian sentences.

Because dates in Croatian use an ordinal number, not a cardinal number.

• petnaest = fifteen
• petnaesti = fifteenth

In a date expression, that ordinal appears in the genitive:

• petnaestog = of the fifteenth / on the fifteenth

So petnaestog srpnja means on the fifteenth of July.

Croatian dates are normally expressed with the genitive.

That is why both parts of the date change:

• petnaesti → petnaestog
• srpanj → srpnja

A simple way to remember it is:

• when saying on the fifteenth of July, Croatian uses the genitive date form

You do not need to translate this word-for-word. Just learn day + month in the genitive as the standard Croatian pattern for dates.

Because srpnja is the genitive singular form of srpanj.

• srpanj = July
• srpnja = of July

After the day of the month, the month name goes in the genitive:

• prvog siječnja = on the first of January
• petnaestog srpnja = on the fifteenth of July

So srpanj is the dictionary form, but srpnja is the form used here.

The basic form is sastanak, and here it is in the nominative singular.

It is the subject of the sentence:

• Sastanak je petnaestog srpnja.
• The meeting is on July 15th.

So:

• sastanak = nominative singular
• grammatical gender: masculine

Yes. Very often Croatian writes dates with numerals:

• Sastanak je 15. srpnja.

The dot after 15 is important. It shows that the number is ordinal:

• 15. = fifteenth

This is a very common thing for English speakers to miss, because English does not use the dot that way.

Yes, but it means something different.

• u srpnju = in July
• petnaestog srpnja = on the fifteenth of July

So:

• Sastanak je u srpnju. = The meeting is in July.
  
  • This gives only the month, not the exact day.
• Sastanak je petnaestog srpnja. = The meeting is on July 15th.
  
  • This gives a specific date.

Because month names in Croatian are normally written with a lowercase letter.

So Croatian writes:

• siječanj
• veljača
• srpanj

not:

• Siječanj
• Veljača
• Srpanj

This is different from English, where month names are capitalized.

Yes, Croatian word order is fairly flexible.

The given sentence is natural:

• Sastanak je petnaestog srpnja.

But you may also hear:

• Petnaestog srpnja je sastanak.

That version gives more emphasis to the date.

One thing to notice is that je is a clitic, so it tends to appear in or near the second position in the sentence.

A rough English-friendly guide is:

• srpnja ≈ srp-nya

A few important points:

• nj sounds like the ny in canyon
• the r in sr- is pronounced clearly, even though there is no vowel before it
• the whole word is compact and consonant-heavy, which can feel unusual for English speakers

You do not need perfect pronunciation immediately, but recognizing nj as one sound helps a lot.