Serbian grammar glossary

Noun

A word for a person, thing or idea: grad (city), žena (woman), ljubav (love). In Serbian every noun has a gender and changes its ending by case and number.

Gender

Every Serbian noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, and the gender is usually visible in the ending: a consonant for masculine (grad), -a for feminine (žena), -o or -e for neuter (selo, more). Adjectives, past tenses and pronouns take the gender of the noun they refer to.

Case

The form a noun (and its adjectives) takes according to its role in the sentence. English does this job with word order and prepositions; Serbian does it with endings. There are seven cases: grad (nominative), grada (genitive), gradu (dative), grad (accusative), grade (vocative), gradom (instrumental), gradu (locative).

Nominative

The dictionary form and the case of the subject: Grad je velik. (The city is big.) Also used after biti (to be): Ja sam student.

Genitive

The case of "of", of possession and of quantity, and the one most prepositions take: centar grada (the centre of the city), bez vode (without water), pet knjiga (five books).

Dative

The case of the indirect object, the one something is given or said to: Dajem knjigu bratu. (I give the book to my brother.) Also after ka/prema (towards).

Accusative

The case of the direct object, the thing acted on: Vidim grad. (I see the city.) Also for direction with u and na: Idem u grad. (I am going into the city.)

Vocative

The case for addressing someone: Marko! stays Marko, but Milan becomes Milane! and Ana becomes Ano! English has no equivalent form.

Instrumental

The case of "with" and "by means of": pišem olovkom (I write with a pencil), sa bratom (with my brother).

Locative

The case of location, always after a preposition: u gradu (in the city), na stolu (on the table), o knjizi (about the book). Compare the accusative for direction: u grad (into the city).

Declension

The full set of case forms of a noun, adjective or pronoun, or the pattern it follows. Serbian nouns fall into a few declension types, decided mostly by gender and by the final sound.

Conjugation

The set of forms a verb takes by person and number: pišem, pišeš, piše, pišemo, pišete, pišu (I write, you write…). Serbian verbs are conjugated in the present; the past and future are built with helper words.

Aspect

Whether a verb presents an action as complete (perfective) or as ongoing or repeated (imperfective). Most actions come as a pair of verbs: pisati (to be writing, imperfective) and napisati (to write to the end, perfective). English hides this in its tenses; Serbian puts it in the choice of verb.

Infinitive

The dictionary form of a verb, ending in -ti or -ći: pisati, ići. In speech Serbian often replaces it with da plus the present: želim da pišem (I want to write).

Enclitic

A short unstressed word that has no fixed meaning on its own and always sits in second position in the sentence: the short forms of biti (sam, si, je, smo, ste, su), of the pronouns (ga, mu, je, ih…) and se. Video sam ga. (I saw him.) Juče sam ga video. (Yesterday I saw him.)

Stem and ending

The part of a word that stays the same (grad-) and the part that changes with case, number or person (-a, -u, -om). Learning Serbian is largely learning which endings go on which stems.

Reflexive verb

A verb used with se: zvati se (to be called), smejati se (to laugh). The se is an enclitic and follows the second-position rule: Zovem se Ana. Ja se zovem Ana.

Agreement

The rule that an adjective, a past tense form or a pronoun matches the gender, number and case of its noun: velik grad (big city), velika kuća (big house), veliko selo (big village); Marko je došao but Ana je došla (came).