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SERBIAN/CROATIAN/BOSNIAN (5)
ARTICLES
There are no articles like “a, an, the”, but people tend to use jed-an, -na, -no as a substitute for “a, an”. Equally there is a tendency to use taj, ta, to, ti, te, ta instead of “the”. But it would make your conversation impossible, if you would set those pronouns everywhere you feel necessary to use “a” or “the”. You can say:
Vidi, miš! (Look, a mouse!) or: Vidi, jedan miš. Now, you can ask: Gde/gdje je miš? Or: Gde/gdje je taj miš. In the further conversation you don’t need either “jedan” nor “taj”. Once the mouse is gone, you can use “onaj” to precise that you are speaking of the mouse you and the other person had seen, but as soon as both of you know which mouse you are speaking about, no article would be necessary.
The problem of articles should not be so important for you. On the contrary, it is pretty uncomfortable for me, because I surely use them incorrectly in my English sentences.
CONVERSATION
Hej! Ono je vojvoda od Edinburga: Hey! That’s the Duke of Edinburgh.
Ima zelen auto: He’s got a green car.
Ne, zeleni auto je od onog Amerikanca: No, the green car belongs to that Ametrican.
Amerikanac govori s jednom ženom: The American talks with a woman.
Ah, to je velika glumica NN. Ah, that’s the great actress NN .
Da, vrlo dobro igra u filmu „Selo i mesec/mjesec“:
I njena majka igra u tom filmu. Vrlo tužan film.
Ali vrlo interesantan.
INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS
ko/tko: who, šta/što: what, koji which, èiji whose
Their counterparts are:
Neko/netko: somebody, nešto: something, neki: one of, neèiji: somebody’s
Niko/nitko: nobody, ništa: nothing, nijedan: none, nièiji: nobody’s
But, alas, they all change in accordance with their function in the sentence (the inevitable declension):
Ko/Tko je to? : Who’ that?
Od koga je pismo?: From whom is the letter?
Kome govoriš?: To whom are you speaking?
Koga volimo: Whom do we love?
S kime se takmièite?: With whom do you compete?
O kome govori? From whom does he/she/it speak?
Neko/netko i niko/nitko follow the same rules.
Što/što declines irregulary:
Šta/što igrate? Wtat are you playing?
Od èega ima tako plavo oko? What from has he/she/it so blue(black) eye?
U èemu vidiš vrednost knjige? In what do you see the value of the book?
Šta uèi? What does he/she/it learn?
Èime dolazite u New York? How (with which transportation mean) do you come to NY?
O èemu govore?: What about are they talking?
Nešto i ništa follow the same rules except except that “nešto” in the accusative (fourth case) has the form “nešto”, like the first case ( nominative).
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Language pair: Serbian; English
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