Croatian nouns inflect for seven cases, and several patterns deserve attention. The masculine genitive singular ends in -a, so stol (table) becomes stola; the dative, locative, and instrumental of feminine nouns follow predictable patterns with -i, -i, and -om, giving žena → ženi and ženom. The genitive plural of many feminine nouns is also -a (žene → žena), and the vocative is reserved for direct address, as in Ana, dođi! (Ana, come!).
Several constructions depend on specific cases. Negation triggers the genitiv negacije, producing Nema kruha (There is no bread). Numbers between two and four govern the genitive singular (dva sata, two hours), while five and above take the genitive plural (pet sati, five hours). The expression ima / nema + genitiv means there is / there isn't, as in Ima li mlijeka?. The dative marks the indirect object (Dao sam mu poklon, I gave him a gift) and can also express possession (Sin mi je u školi, My son is at school). The locative marks location (U gradu sam) and the instrumental marks the instrument or means (Pišem olovkom). Adjectives must agree with nouns in gender, number, and case: feminine forms take -a (lijepa pjesma), neuter takes -o (lijepo dijete), and the comparative is built with the suffix -iji (jak → jači) or analytically with više + adjective (više slatko nego kiselo).
Croatian verbs come in two aspects. Perfektivni glagoli (perfective verbs) describe a completed action (Pojeo sam jabuku, I ate the apple), while imperfektivni glagoli (imperfective verbs) describe an ongoing process (Jeo sam kad si zvao, I was eating when you called). The standard past tense for narration is the perfekt; the literary aorist and imperfekt appear in writing and folk speech. The future has two forms: futur prvi with ću/ćeš/će + infinitive, as in Doći ću u sedam, and futur drugi with kad budem, as in Kad budem u Zagrebu, javit ću se. The kondicional (bih + participle) expresses hypothetical situations, e.g. Volio bih kavu (I would like coffee).
Modality is expressed by a small set of high-frequency verbs: morati (must), moći (can), htjeti (want), smjeti (may), and trebati (need). The imperative has both a positive form, including the first-person plural "let's" (Idemo!), and a negative form (Ne brini se!, Don't worry!). Reflexive verbs use the particle se (On se smije, He is laughing) and the emphatic form sebe. The impersonal se-passiv handles agentless statements, e.g. Govori se hrvatski u Hrvatskoj (Croatian is spoken in Croatia). Complex sentences rely on a small number of connectives: indirect speech is introduced by da followed by the present tense (Rekao je da dolazi), and conditionals come in two types, with ako + present for likely situations (Ako kiša pada, ostajem doma) and kad bi + conditional for hypothetical ones (Kad bih imao novca, putovao bih). Relative clauses use koji, koja, koje for people and things (Čovjek koji je došao) and što for general antecedents (Što god kažem). Questions show subject–verb inversion (Govoriš li hrvatski?), and clitics such as pronouns and auxiliaries must occupy the second position in the clause (Vidjela sam ga jučer). The past active participle (radio sam, pisala je) and the past passive participle (vrata su zatvorena) are used to form compound tenses and passive constructions.