Help with Croatian - Meni vs Me...Tebi vs Te
Mon, 09/07/2009 - 20:20
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Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me! I get very confused over the use of the words "meni", "mene", "me", "mi" as well as "tebi", "tebe", and "ti"...
For example, if I wanted to say, "Why are you looking at me?", would I say, "Sto ME gledas?", "Sto MENI gledas", "Sto MENE gledas"???
or "I will give it to you"...would it be "Ja cu te dat", "Ja cu tebe dat", or "Ja cu tebi dat"...
Please clarify the use of the different endings! Thank you so much =)
For "Why are you looking at me?" you could say both...Sto MENE gledas and Sto ME gledas.
MENI means "to me".
If you wanted to say it to somebody because you are wondering why this person is looking at you... for what reason it is, you would say: "Sto ME gledas?"
If you would wonder why this person is looking at you in particular... In the sense: Why are you looking at me in particular you would say "Sto MENE gledas?"
Its a bit confusing I know....
Same with "I will give it to you" you can say: Ja cu TI dat or ja cu TEBI dat
TEBE means "to you" its the genetiv if you know what grammatical clauses are...
Hope I was able to help you at least a little bit...
Hi,
I'll try to help you, I'm Croat and I know that croatian is rather difficult for strangers, but let's start with your exampl. If for instance you want to ask someone in croatian :Why are you looking at me?, you should say: Sto me gledas? or Zasto me gledas? (why-zasto). If you said Sto meni gledas-that would be wrong and it'd sound like : what are you looking to me. You use "meni" or "mi" when for instance you want to ask Do you want to give it to me?- croatian translation would be: Da li to zelis dati meni or Da li mi to zelis dati?.
In your example I would give it to you- you should translate it as Ja cu ti dati or Ja cu tebi dati. That part of the grammar is rather hard to explain for someone who doesn't speak croatian because it's something you don't find in most of the other foreign languages- different endings are up to 7 cases we use in our grammar: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative,locative,instrumental..
hopefully you'll find it useful
many greetings from Cro
thank you both so much! yes, it is very confusing...i grew up with an istrian dialect, but am trying to learn grammatically correct "croatian"...thank you for your explanations!
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