# Croatian: Sad ja sam ... Ja sam sad...



## wanipa

Dear all,

can someone help me here? Which one or which ones is / are correct?

Sad ja sam dobio knjigu.
Ja sad sam dobio knjigu.
Ja sam sad dobio knjigu.
Ja sam dobio sad knjigu.

BTW, which one is more popular, sad ili sada?

Hvala!


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## kloie

There are interchangeable and I think all of these sentences are correct
Ja sam dobio jednu knjigu sada .
But we need natives to confirm.


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## wanipa

Great, thanks a lot!

Do you think jednu is necessary here?

How about sad and sada?


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## kloie

No not necessary,but jedan just means one or an and sad and sada is interchangeable just like kad and kada.


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## balun

Word order is often said to be "free" in Slavonic languages but what this means is that switching the order of constituents doesn't _necessarily_ lead to ungrammaticality (but it still does in many cases), whereas in English things are much more strict and practically any change would be deemed ungrammatical.

However, switching the order of constituents *does *carry different meanings and nuances, so even grammatically formed sentences are not equal. In the case of the above four sentences, the first two are *ungrammatical* and incorrect, whereas the last two are _grammatical_. But in neutral context, I see the third option as the only viable answer. The fourth one would be less frequent and more dependent on context.

Think of the inability to break "Ja sam" the same way of not being able to break up "Ich habe" in German.

Sad and sada are in complete free variation - there is no meaningful difference between them.


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## wanipa

That's really, really very kind of you both!

I've just begun with Croatian and have got no feeling/sense of that yet.
So these are just some practice for my blind touch of the rules and limits.

I've derived it from the sentence "Ja sam stvarno uživao." and would like
to try out something more than the sentence ifself, ie. not only the sentence 
order, but also sad/sada and jedan/jednu etc..

1. If I were right, sam can only be used in the second position, right?
How about these ones?
Dobio sam jednu knjigu sada .
Dobio sam sada jednu knjigu.
Dobio sada sam jednu knjigu. (?)
Sada sam dobio jednu knjigu.
Sada dobio sam jednu knjigu. (?)

2. Can I simply omit "ja, ti, on" by no stress/emphasis of a person as a rule?

3. As a native speaker, would you please give me some hints on usage of jedan,
for it's quite tricky in comparison to it in English and German.

Ugodan vikend!


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## Милан

wanipa said:


> If I were right, sam can only be used in the second position, right?
> How about these ones?
> Dobio sam jednu knjigu sada .
> Dobio sam sada jednu knjigu.
> Dobio sada sam jednu knjigu. (?)
> Sada sam dobio jednu knjigu.
> Sada dobio sam jednu knjigu. (?)


Those 2 you marked with (?) are wrong. Other 3 are fine.
You could also say 
Jednu knjigu sam dobio sada.
Jednu knjigu sam sada dobio.


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## wanipa

Alright. Thank you very much!


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## FrecciaRossa

wanipa said:


> Dear all,
> 
> can someone help me here? Which one or which ones is / are correct?
> 
> Sad ja sam dobio knjigu.
> Ja sad sam dobio knjigu.
> Ja sam sad dobio knjigu.
> Ja sam dobio sad knjigu.
> 
> BTW, which one is more popular, sad ili sada?
> 
> Hvala!



Hi, I'm croatian from Croatia and I can tell you they're not all interchangeable. The first two sound very strange and you would never hear someone say that in conversation. The other two are similar.
Ja sam sad dobio knjigu/Ja sam dobio sad knjigu. (neutral versions but the first one sound a bit better, or at least that's how I would say it)

There is also a third accetable version.
Ja sam dobio knjigu SAD. (emphasizes the moment, the fact that you got it NOW)

Extra piece of advice, people tend not to use pronouns unless necessary to avoid ambiguity so the most natural sounding frase would be:
Sad sam dobio knjigu.

I hope this helps.


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## FrecciaRossa

Oh, and I forgot, SAD is more popular because it's shorter. SADA can sound more formal but it's mostly used in situations when you want to make pronunciation easier and could use a vowel in front of another word, an extra A in the end helps with that but they are both fine.


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## wanipa

Vrlo ljubazna i hvala lijepa!

How about jedan? Is it more common to omit that suppose both are correct?


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## FrecciaRossa

I'm not sure I understand your question.
Do you mean "Dobio sam JEDNU knjigu", as opposed to "Dobio sam knjigu"?
Knjiga is a noun of female gender so you have to use JEDNA (jednu is Acusative case), jedan is for nouns of male gender. They both sound perfectly fine but for simplicity it's usually not used.


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## kloie

FrecciaRossa said:


> I'm not sure I understand your question.
> Do you meen "Dobio sam JEDNU knjigu", as opposed to "Dobio sam knjigu"?
> Knjiga is a noun of female gender so you have to use JEDNA (jednu is Acusative case), jedan is for nouns of male gender. They both sound perfectly fine but for simplicity it's usually not used.




Wanipa zeli da zna dal se moze da napise recenicu bez (jedan)?!


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## wanipa

Thanks again!

So the usage of a/the (jedan) is clear now. ;-)

Ugodan dan!


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## kloie

wanipa said:


> Thanks again!
> 
> So the usage of a/the (jedan) is clear now. ;-)
> 
> Ugodan dan!



Jedan mean one or a I think it is used more to enfasize on just being about one thing.
Slavic languages don't really have ein, or der.


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## wanipa

That's one of the tricky points by learning a foreign language. ;-(

You don't even have to care about the gender in Enlish, except the ship is a she. ;-)

Danke vielmals!


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