Numbers and Cases

01

'jedan' Behaves Like an Adjective

The number one, jedan, agrees with its noun in gender and case, exactly like an adjective, and the noun stays singular.

• Kupujem jednu bananu.

  I am buying one banana.

• Imam jedan plavi i jedan sivi.

  I have one blue and one gray.

02

Two, Three, Four: the Counted Form

After dva (two), tri (three) and četiri (four), the noun takes a special counted form that looks like the genitive singular - a leftover of the old "dual" number. dva also has a feminine form dvije.

• Imam dva auta.

  I have two cars.

• aut-a, not the plural aut-i - after two, three and four the noun takes this counted form

• tri motocikla

  three motorbikes

• dvije starije sestre

  two older sisters

• Ova farma ima dva konja i tri ovce.

  This farm has two horses and three sheep.

03

Five and Up: the Genitive Plural

From pet (five) onward, the noun goes into the genitive plural, and the number itself stops changing. It is worth dwelling on how odd this looks: a subject phrase like "five years" puts the counted noun into a form that elsewhere means "of years".

• šest jaja

  six eggs

• deset godina

  ten years

• Imam samo trinaest dolara.

  I have only thirteen dollars.

• devedeset i pet godina

  ninety-five years

04

Compound Numbers Follow Their Last Word

In a compound number, the final word decides the case. So twenty-one ends in "one" and takes the singular, while twenty-five ends in "five" and takes the genitive plural - the case is set by the last digit, not by the size of the number.

• trideset i jedan dolar

  thirty-one dollars

• četrdeset i devet centi

  forty-nine cents

• dvadeset i dva auta

  twenty-two cars

05

Numbers in the Oblique Cases

The number rules - jedan agreeing like an adjective, a counted form after two to four, the genitive plural from five - are for the subject (nominative) and the direct object (accusative). Croatian does have oblique forms for the small numbers - dvaju, triju, dvama, trima - but in everyday speech they are largely avoided: the number is simply left as it is and the noun keeps the form it has after that number, whatever preposition stands in front.

• s tri prijatelja

  with three friends

• o pet knjiga

  about five books

• neither tri nor prijatelja has moved into the instrumental; the phrase is frozen and the preposition does the rest

06

Counting People

For children and mixed-gender groups Croatian switches to collective numbers (dvoje, troje), and for groups of men to a separate set (dvojica, trojica); all of these are followed by the genitive.

• Imam dvoje djece.

  I have two children.

• trojica prijatelja

  three friends (men)

07

Counting on Its Own

When you just recite numbers, no noun is involved and nothing declines.

• jedan, dva, tri, četiri, pet

  one, two, three, four, five

08

Big Numbers as Nouns

tisuća (thousand) and milijun (million) act like nouns and are themselves followed by the genitive.

• tisuću tristo eura

  one thousand three hundred euros