Pronouns are words that replace a specific noun in a sentence or a phrase. They can refer to a person, a group of people, or an object. 

When you start studying pronouns in Croatian, you have to keep in mind one important thing – pronouns are changeable words in Croatian. 

What this means is that pronouns change their form depending on the count (singular or plural) and case (there are 7 in Croatian). 

This rule applies to most of the pronouns. So, let’s dig into personal pronouns in Croatian and learn ways how to best memorize them and use them in everyday sentences. 

Personal Pronoun ja (I) and ti (you)

Let’s begin with the first two personal pronouns – ja and ti. I will introduce a couple of rules which form you need to use in different situations and in the end, you can learn the form of the other personal pronouns, as well. 

You and I, these are two of the most common words you can learn as you start learning and using the language. 

Pronouns in Croatian need to be memorized. Their forms are not regular, just like they aren’t regular in English. 

So, let’s look at the forms of the personal pronoun ja and ti. 

Case	Pronoun ja
Nominative	ja
Genitive	mene, me
Dative	meni, mi
Accusative	mene, me
Vocative	–
Locative	meni
Instrumental	mnom(e)

Case	Pronoun ti
Nominative	ti
Genitive	tebe, te
Dative	tebi, ti
Accusative	tebe, te
Vocative	–
Locative	tebi
Instrumental	tobom

Ok, now let’s go slow. Cases are an inevitable component of the Croatian language so you need to get comfortable with using them. 

I’ll cover there all the cases in order of frequency that you will most likely use in everyday speech. 

Nominative

All pronouns can be a subject in the sentence. In this case, you would need to use their basic – Nominative – form. 

Ja sam učitelj. 
[I (N) – am – teacher (N).]
I am a teacher. 

Ja trebam pomoć. 
[I (N) – I-need – help (A)]
I need help. 

Ti si dobar prijatelj.
[You (N) – are – good friend (N)]
You are a good friend. 

Ti jedeš ručak. 
[You (N) – you’re-eating – lunch (A)]
You are eating lunch. 

In these sentences, the personal pronouns are pretty straightforward. If the pronoun is the subject in the sentence, use the Nominative form and follow the pattern Subject – Verb – Object. 

You can leave the subject out

I will speak about this later as well, but this is a good place to explain or remind you that locals almost always leave the pronoun out, if this pronoun is the subject of the sentence. 

The reason for this is the grammatical property of the Croatian verbs. Croatian verbs already express the person that is “performing the action” so adding the actual pronoun is unnecessary. 

Let’s look at an example: 

Ja trebam pomoć. 
[I (N) – I-need – help (A)]
I need help. 

Let’s look at the verb trebam (I need). This is the present tense of the verb trebati, and the ending -am reveals that it’s the 1st person singular – ja. For this reason, it is unnecessary to emphasize the subject or mention it at all. So, you simply say. 

Trebam pomoć.
[I-need – help (A)]
I need help. 

Or, the other example: 

Ti jedeš ručak. 
[You (N) – you’re-eating – lunch (A)]
You are eating lunch. 

The verb of the sentence is jedeš, and it’s the present form of the verb to eat (jesti). The ending -eš reveals it’s the second person singular (you) so you can leave the pronoun out. So, instead, you would say: 

Jedeš ručak. 
[You’re-eating – lunch (A)]
You are eating lunch. 

Be careful!

If the verb in the sentence is a verb to be (biti) or a complex verb (meaning it consists of two or more words), then you the word order might change a bit, if you leave out the personal pronoun. 

Let’s look at this example:

Ja sam učitelj. 
[I (N) – am – teacher (N).]
I am a teacher. 

In this sentence ja is the subject, and the verb is sam which is the present, first-person singular. The object is učitelj. When you leave the subject out, the general rule of thumb is that the auxiliary verb biti still needs to be placed in the second place in the sentence. So, in stead of saying:

Sam učitelj. 
[Am – teacher]

You have to move the verb to the second place, therefore placing the object first:

Učitelj sam. 
[Teacher (N) – am.]
I am a teacher. 

The same thing happens in complex verbs, such as perfect or future tense. 

Ja sam bio učitelj. 
[I (N) – am – was (masc.) – teacher (N)]
I was a teacher. 

Bio sam učitelj. 
[Was (masc.) – am – teacher (N)]
I was a teacher. 

Ok, so now you know how to use the personal pronouns if they are the subject in the sentence.

However, pronouns can also be objects and this is when you need to pay attention to which form (case) to use. 

Accusative and Genitive

The accusative and genitive form of ja and ti is the same and it is:

ja – mene / me
ti – tebe / te

If you’ve studied the Croatian cases, you might have learned that most of the direct objects are in an Accusative case. 

Ja volim tebe.
[I (N) – I-love – you (A)]
I love you. 

Ti voliš mene. 
[You (N) – you-love – me (A)]
You love me.

As you can see, the pronouns change their form as they changed their role in the sentence. This is where cases come into play and are important to know.

The personal pronouns change from being the subject of the sentence, into being an object and that’s why they changed their form from Nominative to Accusative. 

Ja sam učitelj. – Subject
I am a teacher. 

Ti voliš mene. – Object
You love me. 

Ja tražim tebe cijeli dan.
[I (N) – I’m-searching – you (A) – all day (A)]
I have been looking for you all day. 

Let’s quickly go back and check the form of these pronouns in different cases again. 

Case	Pronoun ja
Nominative	ja
Genitive	mene, me
Dative	meni, mi
Accusative	mene, me
Vocative	–
Locative	meni
Instrumental	mnom(e)

Case	Pronoun ti
Nominative	ti
Genitive	tebe, te
Dative	tebi, ti
Accusative	tebe, te
Vocative	–
Locative	tebi
Instrumental	tobom

You’ll notice that there are two forms for Genitive, Dative, and Accusative. The reason for this is that pronouns can have two forms – the long form and the short form. 

Now, this is important to remember. In everyday speech, you will use the short form, unless you want to emphasize the noun for some reason. Let’s see:

Ja tražim tebe cijeli dan.
[I (N) – I’m-searching – you (A) – all day (A)]
I have been looking for you all day. 

Above is the example of the long form of the noun ti in Accusative. However, in everyday conversations, you would say this:

Ja te tražim cijeli dan.
[I (N) – you (A) – I’m-searching – all day (A)]
I have been looking for you all day. 

Notice that once we used the short form of the pronoun, we also had to change its place in the sentence! These shortened forms stand in second place in the sentence. So it would be incorrect to say:

Ja tražim te cijeli dan. 

Let’s look at those previous examples:

Ja volim tebe.
[I (N) – I-love – you (A)]

Ja te volim.
[I (N) – you (A) – I-love]

Ti voliš mene.
[You (N) – you-love – me (A)]

Ti me voliš.
[You (N) – me (A) – you-love]

Ja tražim tebe cijeli dan.
[I (N) – I’m-searching – you (A) – whole day (A)]

Ja te tražim cijeli dan.
[I (N) – you (A) – I’m-searching – whole day (A)]

As you can see, when you use the shortened form of the pronoun, you need to place it in the second place in the sentence. 

A general rule of thumb is that Croatian has the S-V-O word order, but as you can see, it is flexible, especially when you use shortened forms of pronouns. 

You can leave out some pronouns

So, as I said earlier, this rule usually applies if the pronoun is the subject. Again, let’s look at the previous examples: 

Ja te volim. 
[I (N) – you (A) – I-love]
I love you.

Notice that the subject (the pronoun ja) is in the Nominative case. Also, notice the literal translation of volim. Because of the grammatical properties of verbs, the verb itself expresses the person – in this case, the first person singular – I. 

So, because the verb already expresses the subject, the subject itself is redundant and is always left out in everyday speech. So, instead of saying:

Ja te volim.
[I (N) – you (A) – I-love]

You would say:

Volim te.
[I-love – you (A)]

Again, because of the grammatical property of the verb that already expresses the person, you can leave the subject out. 

If you leave the pronoun in the Nominative out (the subject), follow the rule again where the shortened form of the personal pronoun in the sentence (mostly in Accusative) has to be placed in the second place in the sentence. 

The genitive case has the same form of the personal pronouns as accusative and genitive is generally used when you want to express quantity or partiality. However, the genitive case is the case of prepositions, meaning that most of the prepositions require you to use the genitive case (check for a more detailed explanation in our article about the Genitive case).

Dio mene se nada da će uspjeti.
[Part – me (G) – one self – it-hopes – that – it-will – succeed.]
A part of me hopes it will work. 

Do tebe je. – expression
[By – you (G) – is]
It’s up to you. 

Many prepositions require you to use the genitive case:

Poklon je od mene. 
[Gift (N) – is – from – me (G)]
The gift is from me. 

Sjest ću do tebe.
[I’ll-sit – I-want – by – you (G)]
I will sit by you. 

Krenut ću poslije tebe.
[To-go – I-want – after – you (G)]
I will leave after you.

So of the other prepositions that require the genitive case are covered in our article about the genitive case that you can visit here.

Dative/Locative

Remembering all of these rules, let’s move forward with the other cases. 

The dative/locative form of the pronoun ja and ti is:

ja – meni / mi
ti – tebi / ti

Before we move forward to how and when to use these in the sentences, you will notice that the nominative form ti and the dative shortened form ti look the same. 

The difference is in their pronunciation. The nominative is pronounced as a little longer syllable, and the dative and a short syllable. 

The reason these two are covered together is that their form is the same and foreigners, and locals, can hardly tell them apart. So, for a Croatian learner, you can simply think of them as one case, especially if you’re only beginning your journey.

The dative case is the case of the indirect object. So think of it as giving something to someone, transferring something to someone. It is also used with some common verbs I’ll cover next. 

Let’s look at some examples:

Jedan meni, jedan tebi.
[One – me (D), one – you (D)]
One for me, one for you.

Pošalji mi poruku.
[Send – me (D) – message (A)].
Send me a message.

In this request – send me a message – we see three words:

• an imperative verb pošalji,
• short dative form of the personal pronoun I – mi, and
• an object in accusative – poruku.

As you can see, here we again use the short form of the pronoun and we place it in the second place in the sentence. 

The personal pronoun is in the dative case since it is an indirect object. You (the subject) are sending a message (an object – accusative) to me (an indirect object in dative). 

Here are several different examples:

Pokaži mi sliku.
[Show – me (D) – photo (A)]
Show me the photo. 

Pomozi mi.
[Help – me(D)]
Help me. 

Pomažem ti.
[I’m-helping – you (D)]
I’m helping you.

Vjerujem ti.
[I-trust – you (D)]
I trust you.

Dođi mi. 
[Come – me (D)]
Come to me.

Instrumental

The Instrumental form for the first two pronouns is:

ja – (sa) mnom
ti – (s) tobom

Think of the instrumental case as the companionship case or the case to express tools or means. The general rule of thumb is to use it whenever you have the prepositions with or by (tools or means) in English. 

Let’s look at some common examples:

Pođi sa mnom.
[Come – with – me(I)]
Come with me. 

Ne želim ići s tobom.
[Not – I-want – to-go – with – you (I)]
I don’t want to go with you.

Ne poigravaj se* sa mnom!
[No – you-toy – yourself – with – me (D)]
Don’t toy with me!

* Don’t let this reflexive verb confuse you. It’s the negative imperative form of the verb to toy with and the infinitive is poigravati se. This little reflexive pronoun se is a part of the verb, so the negative imperative form would be ne poigravaj se.

So, whenever you want to express the tools, means, or companionship, use the instrumental. 

The form of Personal Pronouns

Following the previous rules applies to all of the personal pronouns. Here you can study the different forms of personal pronouns through all the cases, both singular and plural. 

Sing.	I	you	he	she	it
N	ja	ti	on	ona	ono
G	mene, me	tebe, te	njega, ga	nje, je	njega, ga
D	meni, mi	tebi, ti	njemu, mu	njoj, joj	njemu, mu
A	mene, me	tebe, te	njega, ga, nj	nju, ju, je	njega, ga, nj
L	meni	tebi	njemu	njoj	njemu
I	mnom(e)	tobom	njim(e)	njom(e)	njim(e)

pl.	we	you	they, masc.	they, fem.	they, neut.
N	mi	vi	oni	one	ona
G	nas	vas	njih,ih
D	nama, nam	vama, vam	njima, im
A	nas	vas	njih, ih
L	nama	vama	njima
I	nama	vama	njima

I hope this article has been helpful to either clear up some things or lead you into the introduction of the personal pronouns in Croatian. Keep up the good work and keep studying!

Sretno!