There are several little unstressed words which the foreign learner can find tiresome to start with. They include the short forms of biti, short forms of the personal pronouns, the interrogative particle li and the reflexive particle se.  They are all enclitics (words which carry no stress and are pronounced as though they were part of the preceding word. Consequently they cannot be placed first in a sentence or clause) which must be placed immediately after the first stressed word, or phrase, in a sentence or clause.

If follows that, where unstressed forms are concerned, word order is quite strict, and that it is affected by the presence or absence of the personal pronoun. Compare :

Mi smo gladni                     we are hungry
Gladni smo

The meaning here is identical, except that the use of the personal pronoun tends to make the sentence emphatic.

Word Order 1

NB: Because of the short forms of biti (enclitics), they must be placed immediately after the first stressed word in the sentence.  Thus, if the pronoun or other subject is used: Ja sam došla, Mladić je stigao.  However, if the pronoun is not used, the enclitic is placed after the participle: Došli smo, Vidjela si

Word order 2

The consequence of above rule, that enclitics must be placed immediately after the first stressed word (or phrase) in a sentence or clause - is that in a complex sentence, the auxiliary can sometimes be quite far removed from the participle:

Putnik je često tijekom putovanja izlazio da popuši cigaretu.
The passenger went out often in the course of his journey to smoke a cigarette.

Kažem da sam se poslije prvih lijepih dana u Zagrebu osjećala kao da oduvijek živim ovdje.
I say that after the first lovely days in Zagreb I felt as though I had always lived here.

Jako mi je drago što je tvoj sin, koga nisam jos upoznala, konašno uspio doći ovamo.
I'm very glad that your son, whom I have not yet met, has at last succeeded in coming here.

Word Order 3

Pronouns mut be placed in a strict order:

Dative precedes accusative/genitive:

     Ovo je poklon, dajem ti ga   -   This is a gift; I'm giving it to you

Where short forms of pronouns occur in the same sentence as short forms of verbs (biti and two other auxiliaries), the verbal forms precede the pronouns:

     Dao sam ti ga   -   I gave it to you

Reflexive pronoun se follows these:

     Rado smo je se sjećali

There is one exception: the third person singular of biti  -  je  -  is placed after all the other enclitics:

     Da li ih se je sjetio?   -   Did he remember them?

This is the formula you should learn: li (interrog. part.); ve (verbal); D, A/G (of pronouns); se; je.

Word Order 4

As was the case with the past tense, the future auxiliary may precede or follow the main verb, depending on whether the pronoun is used or not.

With verbs ending in -ti, the final -i is removed and the future is then written:

	Ja ću biti	but	Bit ću
	Ti ćeš spavati		Spavat ćeš
	Mi ćemo vidjeti		Vidjet ćemo

(In the Serbian variant, the infinitive and auxiliary are run together: biću, spavaćeš, videćemo.)

NB: The enclitic follows the infinitive only if the infinitive is the first word in the sentence or clause. This is because the enclitic continues to obey the rule which places it as near the beginning of the sentence as possible

Word Order 5

This is another area which can cause some diffićulties for English speakers. Some of these are basic to correct grammer, and some are subtler and largely stylistic. It is important to be aware of differences in word order between the two languages, both in composing correct and informative utterances in Croatian and Serbian and in translating from Croatian and Serbian into English

Diffićulties arise for two main reasons: (i) the presence of enclitics, for which there is no equivalent in English; (ii) the fact that English-speakers are used to a system in which word order indicates syntactic relations between the main elements of a sentence and only secondary elements (adverbs, preposition phrases) normally vary in position

Enclitics

Where there is a group of enclitics they must all come together in that order:

Ivan mi je kupio kartu - Ivan bought me a ticket

NB ne + verb count as a single word:

Ona je zauzeta i ne može nas vidjeti - She is busy and she can't see us

Remember also that the linking conjunctions i, a and ni do not count as separate words in this context.
The first element may also be a phrase:

Jedan moj prijatelj mi je rekao da imate stan - A friend of mine told me you had a flat

Prošlog tjedna su nas pozvali na večeru - Last week they invited us to dinner

In general, it is considered 'literary' or 'pedantic' to break up a phrase by putting the enclitics strictly after the first word. But notice the following interrogative words which do not form a phrase with the words they govern:

Koliko je sati - What's the time?

Koliko ima godina? - How old is he/she?

Koje je boje tvoj novi auto? - what colour is your new car?

The conjunctions ali, ili and jer may be treated as the first word in the sentence or simply as linking words.

but some other conjunctions never count as the first word because they are followed by a pause, sometimes an actual comma:

Dakle nisam mu ga dao - So I didn't give it to him

Prema tome, javit će ti se sutra - Consequently he'll ring you tomorrow

The most important thing to remember is that if a sentence or clause starts with a 'clause introducer', the enclitics must follow immediately after it. Consequently when you are composing a clause in Croatian or Serbian and come to such a word you must immediately work out which enclitics will be required later in the sentence and put them in. All the other elements in the sentence must then be fitted in. This necessity is the cause of frequent mistakes for English-speakers

Such 'clause introducers' are da, što, ako, relatives and interrogatives

Rekao je da će mi ga odmah vratiti - He said (that) he would give it straight back to me

Drago mi je što ste nam opet došli - I'm glad (that) you've come to us again

Prije nego što smo mu objasnili o ćemu se radi, izašao je
Before we had explained to him what it was about, he went out

Ako mi je vrati, dat ću ti knjigu - If he returns it to me, I'll give you the book

To je prijatelj koji mi je pričao o tebi - That's the friend who told me about you

To je prijatelj o kojemu sam ti pričala - That's the friend I told you about (about whom I told you)

više ne znam ni kako se zvao - I no longer even know what he was called

Moram znati kad ćešmi ga dati - I must know when you're going to give it to me

Care must be taken with subordinate clauses which behave like independent units. Enclitics from the main clause are not usually placed immediately after them. This presents no difficulty if the main clause comes first:

Jasno mi je da si ga tajno viđala - I realise that you've been seeing him secretly

When the subordinate clause comes first the enclitics from the main clause follow the first word in the main clause: Da si ga tajno viđala, jasno mi je. This construction can be awkward, so often the pronoun 'to' is added to take over the role of the subordinate clause: Da si ga tajno viđala, to mi je jasno. Such constructions are far more frequent in Croatian and Serbian than their equvalent would be in English

Infinitives can behave either as se parate clauses or as parts of the main clause

Mira te želi vidjeti - Mira wants to see you

if the main clause contains enclitics, they are all put together:

Mira te je željela vidjeti - Mira wanted to see you

Pokušat ću ga sutra naći - I shall try to find him tomorrow

Zašto se ne bi Bogdan mogao javiti danas - why shouldn't Bogdan ring today?

Word Order 6

Apart from the strict rules governing the placing of enclitics, word order in Croatian and Serbian is relatively free. The existence of cases makes it possible to place subject and object in any order:

dala sam nosaču prtljagu - I gave the porter the luggage

Prtljagu sam dala nosaču
Nosaću sam dala prtljagu

All of these sentences are equally acceptable. Their order is not random, however: each sentence conveys a slightly different emphasis. It is important to distinguish first of all between basic, grammatical word order in Croatian and Serbian and order which is determined by context and which conveys meaning in itself
Basic word order, independent of context, is on the whole similar to English: subject - verb - object.

In word order conditioned by context, however, there are various differences. These seem to stem from the fact that in Croatian and Serbian as a rule the less informative part of the sentence comes before the more informative part. (This is related to the question of enclitics, in that stress tends to build up over the sentence with increasing emphasis on the end. Consequently the enclitics must be placed as far as possible from this inherent emphasis). Examples:

Prošlog tjedna nismo uopće izašli - We didn't go out at all last week

This order emphasises the fact that the speaker stayed at home.

Nismo uopće izašli prošlog tjedna: this order, on the other hand, stresses the fact that the speaker usually goes out a lot in any given week but did not this partićular week. This means that in Croatian and Serbian if the object is of less informational value (perhaps because it has already been mentioned) it may be placed first in the sentence:

Tu kuću je sagradio poznati arhitekt - A famous architect built that house.

It is possible for English to preserve the Croatian and Serbian order by using a passive construction: 'This house was built by a famous architect.' Ths is a very important device which works both ways: Croatian and Serbian generally avoids the passive, but English passive constructions can usually be rendered by placing the object first in the sentence, as in the example above.
The principle is, then, that new information or the more informative part of the sentence tends to follow other elements in the sentence:

Ovi stanovi su sagrađeni prije deset godina. U stanovima žive uglavnom mladi ljudi.
These flats were built ten years ago. On the whole young people live in the flats

Adverbial 'scene-setting' phrases

In a neutral sentence in Croatian and serbian, these phrases are placed at the beginning of the sentence: their function is to 'set the scene' for the main information. In english, on the other hand, they are normally at the end:

Na plaži je bilo mnogo meduza - There were a lot of jellyfish on the beach.

Po povratku smo bili jako zauzeti - We were very busy after we got back

Za vrijeme odmora na otoku, nismo mnogo čitali - We didn't read much during our holiday on the island

In general, in Croatian and Serbian advrebs which qualify or quantify the action of the verb precede it:

Jako lijepo svira klavir - She plays the piano very well

Prebrzo govore: Ništa ne razumijem! - They speak too fast. I don't understand a thing

So, English-speakers should take care over the placing of adverbs and adverbial phrases: make anote of instances you come across in your reading.

Adverbs and pronouns with low informationa value

Usually, objects, pronouns and adverbs which carry little information precede the verb. To put them after the verb would give them special emphasis, altering the meaning of the sentence:

Such 'low prominence' words include: nešto, negdje, nekako, nekud, tu, ovdje, jučer, danas, sutra, ovo, to, sad, često, stalno