Prepositional Case in Croatian

Croatian ⋙ Croatian A1

Welcome to our Croatian course for beginners! Today, we're going to talk about Prepositional.
We recommend that you read our previous articles about other cases if you haven't already done that.

The prepositional case, or "Lokativ" in Croatian, is one of the seven grammatical cases used in the Croatian language. This case primarily indicates location or position and is often associated with prepositions. Nouns and adjectives in this case answer the questions o kom? (about whom?), o čem? (about what?) and gdje? (where?). It is used in sentences when we describe places, time of events, or specify its topic. The prepositions that go with the prepositional case are: na (on, in), o (about), po (across), pri (by), u (in).

Formation

To form the prepositional case, you typically take the nominative form of a noun and apply specific endings, depending on the gender and number of the noun.

For masculine nouns ending in a consonant, you often add "-u" for singular nouns and "-ima" for plural nouns.
For feminine nouns ending in "-a," you generally add "-i" for singular nouns and "-ama" for plural nouns.
For neuter nouns ending in "-o," the prepositional case often coincides with the nominative form.

Examples

Let's look at examples in the singular:

Perhaps this case is one of the most predictable. Feminine gender - endings of adjectives '-oj,' nouns '-i,' masculine and neuter gender - endings of adjectives '-om,' nouns '-u.' Additionally, you can notice that the forms of nouns in the prepositional case and the dative case are the same; the difference can be seen only in adjectives.

Now let's see what happens in the plural form of the prepositional case:

In the prepositional case, the plural forms for all genders coincide with the plural forms of the instrumental case.

Usage

The prepositional case is primarily used to indicate location or position. It answers the questions "gdje?" (where?) or "o čemu?" (about what?). For example:
It is also used with specific prepositions to convey various relationships, such as "u" (in), "na" (on), "o" (about), "kod" (at), and more.

In summary, the prepositional case in Croatian is primarily used to indicate location, position, and relationships.
That's it. We hope that our lessons have allowed you to get an understanding of how cases work in the Croatian language. Good luck in learning Croatian and see you.