Learn Hardcore Croatian: U genitivu nema knjige, a u dativu dajem knjigu sestri. - In the genitive there is no book, and in the dative I give the book to my sister.

U genitivu nema knjige, a u dativu dajem knjigu sestri.

In the genitive there is no book, and in the dative I give the book to my sister.

Breakdown of U genitivu nema knjige, a u dativu dajem knjigu sestri.

Questions & Answers about U genitivu nema knjige, a u dativu dajem knjigu sestri.

What do u genitivu and u dativu mean here?

They mean in the genitive and in the dative.

Here the sentence is talking about grammar cases, not about physical location. So u genitivu means in the genitive case, and u dativu means in the dative case.

Why are they genitivu and dativu, not just genitiv and dativ?

Because after the preposition u meaning in, Croatian normally uses the locative case.

So:

genitiv → u genitivu
dativ → u dativu

A useful detail: even though the phrase says in the dative, the word dativu itself is not in the dative here; after u, it is functioning as locative. For these nouns, the locative singular happens to look the same as the dative singular.

What exactly is nema?