LanguageMongoose wrote:Hello again, another question about Colloquial Croatian; there is a part in one of the dialogs where the speaker is listing some things he likes to do on a train and says the following:
Volim gledati kroz prozor dok putujem, pomalo i spavati...
The meaning here should be "I like to look out the window, sleep a little bit...". However, the i here is confusing me, I'd have though the i would go before the pomalo, as in "look out the window and sleep a little bit". In it's current position, it makes me think that it's that he will look out the window a little bit and sleep, but the the comma (and the cadence of the audio accompanying the dialog) make it pretty clear that "pomalo i spavati" is a single phrase. Is it that "pomalo i" + infinitive is another set construction?
I don't think it's just with the infinitive,
pomalo i could be followed by a noun or an adjective here, and
pomalo can go without
i. The placement of
i just doesn't correspond to English "and", as it can also mean something like "also", whereas "and" is often translated with "
a" rather than "
i" where the meaning implies some sort of contrast and not addition.
You could translate this as something like:
I like to look out the window when I travel, and also sleep a bit.
Here are some examples from Wiktionary:
ne možeš istovremeno
i tužiti
i suditi
you can't simultaneously both sue and judgei meni se sviđa vaš odabir
I like your choice tooon je ne samo darovit,
nego i jako marljiv
he is not only talented, but also very industriousHere's some from Google:
Igramo stoni tenis, pomalo
i košarku
We play table tennis, (and) a bit of basketball (too)Matematičar koji nije pomalo
i pesnik neće nikada biti potpun matematičar
A mathematician who isn't also a bit of a poet will never be a full mathematician.njegov neobavezni naziv nas intrigira, ali pomalo
i plaši
its optional name intrigues us, but it also scares usI also has some other idiomatic meanings like "even" or as a general intensifier.