The Seven Cases

Level 2

Croatian has seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative and instrumental. A case is a grammatical role and pattern, not simply a unique ending.

How It Works

Nominative commonly names a subject. Accusative commonly marks a direct object. Genitive appears in possession, quantity and many prepositional expressions, while dative often identifies a recipient.

Vocative addresses someone directly. Locative occurs with prepositions such as u or o in appropriate meanings. Instrumental can name a means without a preposition or a companion with s.

These are starting uses, not exclusive definitions. A noun’s declension supplies its forms; agreement changes modifiers with it. Dative and locative often look alike, and an inanimate masculine nominative can match its accusative. Learn a meaningful phrase for each use rather than trying to identify case from the last letter alone.

Examples (4)

  1. Ana čita knjigu.

    Ana is reading a book.

    Ana is nominative; knjigu is accusative.

  2. Dajem knjigu Ani.

    I am giving the book to Ana.

    Ani is the dative recipient.

  3. Razgovaramo o Ani.

    We are talking about Ana.

    O governs a locative form, which looks like the dative here.

  4. Pišem olovkom.

    I am writing with a pencil.

    Olovkom is instrumental of means, without s.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

The Seven CasesLevel 2

Learn This First

The full case overview extends the familiar subject and direct-object roles.

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.