Prepositions and case use

So far, you’ve already seen how important prepositions are in Croatian. They may be short words, but they connect everything in a sentence. You practiced them throughout your first year of learning. In this section, we’ll review some of the prepositions you already know and see how they work with different cases.

🚶 KAMO? –Motion

Telling Where People Are Going

In this section we will review how to express motion toward some place: in other words, we will talk about how to answer the question Kamo? We will review the two prepositions (u and na) which are followed by a noun in the Accusative case. Both can express a range of meanings, but are generally the equivalents of the English prepositions “in, “at” and/or “on”, respectively. The basic explanation of the meaning of each of these prepositions is as follows.

Rule: u / na + Accusative = motion toward a certain place

📌 GDJE? –Location

Telling Where People and Things are Located

As its name says, the Locative case is primarily used to express where someone or something is located. In other words, it answers the question WHERE someone/something is (Gdje?). One thing we need to mention at the very beginning is that the Locative case is the only case in Croatian that is always accompanied by a preposition. However, this does not mean that all prepositions in Croatian can take the Locative case—only some of them do.

Rule: u / na + Locative = location

Prepositions u or na are followed by the Locative case when we want to indicate location. The basic explanation of the meaning of each of these prepositions is as follows:

🫴 Preposition ZA

Accusative case

Together with the prepositions u/na that you encountered so far, there is another very common preposition when it comes to the Accusative case. The preposition za can easily be translated in English as for. Look at the following examples:

🌀 Preposition PO

Locative rules

Rule: po + Locative = ‘along,’ ‘over,’ ‘on a surface’

The preposition po is followed by the Locative case when we want to indicate that someone’s activity or something occurs or is located all over a certain surface.

Rule: po + Locative = ‘(known) for’

When we want to express the meaning that someone or something is known for/by a certain thing, we should also use the preposition po + Locative. This is mostly expressed with the structure poznat/-a/-o po + Locative.

✚ Preposition S/SA

Instrumental rules

The most common use of the Instrumental case is when we want to indicate who or what we do things with. In other words, we use the Instrumental case when we want to express that we are:

Doing something with someone

•  Pričam s prijateljicom. – I talk with my friend

Having something with something

•  Sendivič s majonezom. – A sandwich with mayonnaise.

The instrumental case is used with several prepositions, but the most common one is the preposition s (meaning “with”) or its variant sa. The variant sa is used when the following word begins with letters s, š, z, ž or consonant clusters such as ks-, ps-, pš-. Examples when to use the variant sa:

↩ Position

Genitive – Where Things Are

When talking where certain things/items/people are located (i.e., positioned), we usually use the following prepositions: All these prepositions will take the Genitive Case.

↔️ OD–DO

Genitive use

Both prepositions are used to indicate:

The expression Od jutra do sutra (I work day and night) is a very common expression among the locals. It indicates that someone [works] all day and all night long (lit. from the morning until the next day). These two prepositions always go with the Genitive case.

Both prepositions can also be used independently:

🧑‍💻 Razumijevanje

Let’s practice…

1.3 Zadatak 1: Prijedlozi

Complete the sentences by filling in the blanks with the correct preposition. Pay attention to the case that follows the preposition.

1.3 Zadatak 2: Jesmo li razumjeli?

Complete each sentence with the correct preposition.